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The Clash were an Iconic band. Dubbed "the only band that matters", in the top 50 of Rolling Stone's Greatest Artist of All Time. Their signature album "London Calling" was named #8 by the same magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums.

What are the chances that the new Clash mechanic can live up to that legacy? So far everyone I've seen seems pretty skeptical that clash can make much of a splash so I decided to run the numbers.

For those whose haven't seen it yet, the clash mechanic reads thus:

(Each clashing player reveals the top card of his or her library then puts that card on the top or bottom. A player wins if his or her card had a higher converted mana cost) 

The if your card "initiates" the clash and you win you gain an extra effect like draw a card, more damage, double the effect. Something good. You can only gain by initiateing a clash (so far) never lose anything if your clash fails.

In the abstract most decks are composed of approximately 40% 0 casting cost cards (land). That means even a card composed of 60% one casting cost cards has nearly a one in four chance chance (.40*.60 = 24%) of winning a given clash. If nearly the worst possible configuration of a clash deck can win 1/4 of the time than maybe there are some legs in this mechanic.

I decided to dig a little deeper and came up with some generic deck configurations. The table below lays out their casting costs as well as some other stats I'll refer to.

 The table didn't work at all, so I'll try to list the deck compositions below - sorry.

Aggro:

0cc: 23

1cc: 16

2cc: 12

3cc: 6

4cc: 3

5+cc: 0

avg cc: 1.17

 

Control:

0cc: 25

1cc: 4

2cc: 12

3cc: 10

4cc: 4

5+cc: 5

avg cc: 1.65

 

Midrange:

0cc: 24

1cc: 10

2cc: 8

3cc: 8

4cc: 4

5+cc: 6

avg cc: 1.60

 

Clash:

0cc: 24

1cc: 4

2cc: 10

3cc: 12

4cc: 5

5+cc: 5

avg cc: 1.75

The decks above are meant to approximate the listed archetypes. The first important thing to notice is that thanks to lands it is VERY difficult to build a deck with an effective casting cost of greater than two. That means that any deck with 30 or more cards above 2cc will achieve a 50% ratio of wins against a random field. Focusing your deck on cards 2cc and above seems pretty non-restrictive and we are already at the coinflip point for wins with clash. With that in mind I added the "clash" list above trying keep a reasonable curve that still focused above the 2cc mark.

Since all of the above decks (and virtually ever list I plugged in) had a average casting cost between 1 and 2 the calculations were pretty straight forward. Just add up the cards with cc 2+ in each deck and divide by 60 and you discover that each deck wins clashes against a random card from almost any deck at a rate of:

"Aggro": 35%

"Control": 52%

"Mid-Range": 43%

"Clash": 53%

Unfortunately, as easy as it is to get your win percentage above 50% your lands eventually hold you down. Remember, you can never win when you flip a land which means that you basically max out at 60% success rate (due to having ~40% lands). So does a slightly better than 50% rate make clash playable? My guess is that it is close. Clash by its nature is cheap, being tacked on to other effects. Unfortunately so far it has been spoiled as added to creatures (fragile) and one shot spells. The only clash effects on less vulnerable permanents so far are clash triggers (ex: when you win a clash, draw a card).

In my humble opinion for clash to be "the next cycling" it will take more permanents that can repeatedly trigger clash. If those hit a critical mass then I think the 55% win rate in a clashes would make this a competitor, as least within the block environment.

A couple blogs down Jeremy Fuentes brought up playing MTGO. I'm always surprised to hear posters in the forums say that they don't have a MTGO account. Sure, maintaining two viable collections can be expensive but if you are serious about competing access to MTGO seems essential to me.

 

The primary reason is that whether you know it or not you are learning by rote. Complex card interactions and triggers become ingrained just by cycling through them so often. Knowing how cards are played and when triggers occur can be crucial to your competitive success. Can you explain to someone why they can't sac cards and successfully unsuspend Greater Gargadon during their main phase while you have Teferi in play? Not everyone can. While judges are, for the most part, fonts of knowledge I've heard plenty of horror stories about players and judges being rules lawyered in to incorrect rulings. You should ALWAYS at least know your own deck's timing interactions forwards and back.

 

MTGO doesn't make you flawless, in fact its insistence that you pay for pacts and upkeeps can make you lazy when it comes time to play with cardboard, but the playtime it allows and the specificity with which the card interactions are depicted is priceless. I know some people can hear a card interaction and file it but I'm a very visual person and heavy use of MTGO has greatly increase my knowledge of the mechanics of this game.

 

On to the sealed pool...

 

The following is a pool I opened in a TPF sealed premier event this weekend:

Green:
1 AEther Web
1 Evolution Charm
1 Gaea's Blessing
1 Healing Leaves
1 Hypergenesis
1 Kavu Primarch
1 Llanowar Augur
1 Mire Boa
1 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss
1 Savage Thallid
1 Scryb Ranger
1 Spinneret Sliver
1 Sporoloth Ancient
1 Strength in Numbers
1 Thallid Shell-Dweller
1 Tromp the Domains
1 Unyaro Bees
1 Utopia Vow

Blue:
1 Ancestral Vision
1 Aquamorph Entity
1 Careful Consideration
1 Crookclaw Transmuter
1 Bewilder
1 Leviathan
1 Mystic Speculation
1 Ophidian Eye
1 Paradox Haze
1 Screeching Sliver
1 Shadow Sliver
1 Shaper Parasite
1 Snapback
1 Spiketail Drakeling
1 Venarian Glimmer
1 Venser's Diffusion
1 Whip-Spine Drake

Red:
1 Battering Sliver
1 Blazing Blade Askari
1 Disintegrate
1 Fatal Frenzy
1 Flamecore Elemental
1 Flowstone Channeler
1 Fury Sliver
1 Homing Sliver
1 Prodigal Pyromancer
1 Riddle of Lightning
1 Two-Headed Sliver
1 Word of Seizing

Black:
1 Bitter Ordeal
1 Call to the Netherworld
1 Cyclopean Giant
1 Dunerider Outlaw
1 Grave Scrabbler
1 Mana Skimmer
1 Stronghold Rats
1 Sudden Death
1 Treacherous Urge
1 Trespasser il-Vec
1 Urborg Syphon-Mage
1 Viscid Lemures

White:
1 Fortify
1 Judge Unworthy
1 Cavalry Master
1 Detainment Spell
1 Even the Odds
1 Lumithread Field
1 Lymph Sliver
1 Pallid Mycoderm
1 Sidewinder Sliver
1 Sunlance
1 Zealot il-Vec
1 Whitemane Lion

Artifact & Land:
1 Brass Gnat
1 Paradise Plume

Gold:
1 Firewake Sliver
1 Harmonic Sliver

 

All in all I felt like it was one of the most awkward pools I have worked with. There were some very solid cards, but not much depth in any color. As a pool there were several options for removal, but they were spread across colors. My big bomb was Tromp the Domains, and since I felt my card pool was shallow I went with a fairly even three color build and a red splash:

6 Forest
6 Island
2 Mountain
4 Plains

1 Ancestral Vision
1 Aquamorph Entity
1 Careful Consideration
1 Crookclaw Transmuter
1 Evolution Charm
1 Fortify
1 Judge Unworthy
1 Kavu Primarch
1 Lumithread Field
1 Mire Boa
1 Mystic Speculation
1 Pallid Mycoderm
1 Scryb Ranger
1 Shaper Parasite
1 Sporoloth Ancient
1 Strength in Numbers
1 Sunlance
1 Thallid Shell-Dweller
1 Tromp the Domains
1 Utopia Vow
1 Venser's Diffusion
1 Whip-Spine Drake
1 Whitemane Lion
1 Disintegrate

 

The thought process behind this build was basically just me falling in love with the overrun concept: Tromp the Domains or Fortify and a bunch of Thallids. Blue offered some removal, bounce and the dig felt I desperately needed to find Tromp (which was pretty successful). White brought more removal to the table and a couple of Morphs. Since I was playing a Tromp deck a splashed red for Disintegrate.

 

The deck ran like a dream or a nightmare depending almost entirely on whether I was allowed to keep a Thallid generator in play. The games I won were easy stalls to a blowout, the games a lost I got my first thallid or two killed and I literally had no real backup plan.

 

Fortify was a mistake as well. This deck really could have used another few bodies. Mystic speculation was a bit of a flyer as well. I've come to adore scry cards in limited, but I'm still not sure about this guy. I don't think I had enough creatures to warrant this as a maindeck inclusion over another warm body.

 

Ultimately though my big mistake was passing on black. Looking back black seems like the clear companion to green. Unfortunately I fell in love with the Tromp concept and I played blue over a much stronger black pool to make sure I saw it. A GBw build would have featured most of my limited amount of removal but also have given me more evasive guys and alternative paths to victory. In the end I went 2-2 drop missing the top 8 for the first time in 3 events. C'est la vie.

 

Mark Rosewater left us with his customary set of teasers on his Monday column: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr296

Here are the teasers:

• the next evolution of a popular cycle from Mirage
• a 10/2 creature for (okay, there might be another cost)
• a green enchantment that can keep the 10/2 from hurting you
• a cycle of creatures that lets you use a resource first seen in Unglued
• a card that makes all your Treefolk indestructible (I know you already know it; it's still cool)
• a white answer for any bothersome nonland permanent
• a Shapeshifter lord
• an artifact that lets you play spells for free
• lands that provide two colors of mana and can come into play untapped
• and a card that finally cares about Goats

I'm going to pull out a few of these for speculation.

 

1) "the next evolution of a popular cycle from Mirage" The first mirage cycle that springs to mind is the oft imitated "Charm" cycle. While this is always a possibility we've seen charms pretty recently (in TSB and PLC sets). Given the nature of this set as a tribal block my wild guess is that we'll see something along the lines of the "Spirit of the Night" cycle - creatures that can Voltron into something larger.

 

2) "a green enchantment that can keep the 10/2 from hurting you" Barbed foliage was one of my favorite cards in Mirage block - especially sealed. Perhaps we could see a more focused iteration? Doing two damage to one attacking creature rather than one to all attackers? Alternatively it may prevent attacks completely from some sources a la moat. A reverse moat (fliers may not attack) would certainly be in keeping with the reach mechanic the green is famed for.

 

3) "lands that provide two colors of mana and can come into play untapped" So the question is: which of the Future Sight dual cycles will make its full appearance in Lorwyn? Grove of the burnwillows and River of Tears" seem to be the prime candidates to me based on flavor text. River of Tears was my gut choice but the flavor seems like it might be more in line with the next mini-block than Lorwyn, still I'm going with the River. Interestingly assuming one of the FUT cycles is expanded that means one color combination is short a dual land in standard.

 

4) "a cycle of creatures that lets you use a resource first seen in Unglued" I bring this up for brainstorming help because I wracked my brain an couldn't think of what Rosewater could be referring to. But then I was relying on wikipedia and gatherer searchses to try and tract down this clue as I've held all of one unglued card in my life. The term "resource" is odd enough that I don't think it is something as simple as more "enchant player" cards (that debuted in unglued and were subsequently printed in TSP and FUT).

Hail to the Victors? Not so much.

 The University of Michigan, the winningest team in the history of college football, ranked number 5 in the nation, became the first ranked team EVER to lose to a division 1-AA team... and they lost at home 34-32.

  Now I'll freely admit my bias: I attended Michigan State University and Spartans hate Wolverines and visa versa. However, this event was as great a day for pairity in college football as any I can recall. Appalachian State was number one team in Div I-AA as the defending nation champion so we are not talking about chopped liver here. This was a team that has played together for 4 years - as few jump to the NFL from I-AA, much less leave early and they played like a team in the truest sense of the word.

  After the travesty of undefeated Boise State not even playing in the national chamionship game last year I hope the old gaurd of pollsters are paying attention. The talent pool in college football is deeper than it has ever been and teams need to be ranked according to there performance, not according to their history or the size of their TV contracts.

   I hope everyone outside of Ann Arbor is rejoicing today, as the Mountaineers from tiny Appalachian State had every opportunity to go away and let Michigan complete their come back but they fought to the bitter end - denying two Michigan two point conversions and blocking two UM field goals all in the fourth quarter. If you haven't seen them yet you should try and catch the highlights of this game whether you care about football specifically or not this game represented the best side of sports and team competition.

   The only down side to this? Well, my guess is it will be some time before the Mountaineers will be invited back to "The Big House" - I'm thinking that they are fine with that.

Casual: Magic’s four six letter word?

Blake Rasmusson’s blog earlier this week got
me thinking about the Casual room. I am almost exclusively a denizen of the
online magic world when it comes to magical cards. My IRL collection, apart
from a few boxes of Odyssey, and Time Spiral block cards resides somewhere in a
vast tupperware tub. In that tub it rests, undisturbed for years, conjoined
with an old friend’s collection, somewhere in the basement of said friend’s
mother’s house. Despite my re-addiction to magic being almost completely in the
electronic world I have spent almost no time in the casual room. In fact I
probably spent more time playing the MTGO demo version trying to decide whether
I really wanted to sign hours of my life and mountains of money (not really)
over to a game destined to lead to neither fame, nor fortune. After I took the
plunge I spent the first week playing an essentially glorified limited deck in
the “new players” room. Yet, once it was time to get down to business I started
to assemble cards for a competitive deck and began to test my decks in the
Tournament Practice room.

The primary reason was because it only took a few games in
the Casual room to realize that it wasn’t truly “casual” at all. For starters
there are far too many people testing there budget builds of tournament caliber
decks in the casual room. These people follow the methods of the leading lights
of the internet budget community Messers Bleiweiss and
Romeo (both of whom I read and enjoy). These two friends to the budget builder
usually test the initial iterations of all their builds in the casual room and
thus their devotees do likewise.

Unfortunately not all budget decks are created equal. “Budget”
has a different meaning to everyone, as does “casual” and budget and casual are
not necessarily synonymous. On one end of the scale there are budget decks that
are just Gruul or Boros or Teachings or whatever decks without the expensive
mana base and maybe some other stand-in cards. Others are decks built to
utilize whatever cards someone happens to have opened or drafted – this is
where the line between “budget” and “casual” blurs for me. And on the other end
of the scale are the casual combo decks built around 6-7 mana cards, often
rares that are truly powerful (doubling cube, storm herd, etc.) but difficult
to resolve or use in a competitive setting.

None of these types of decks feel comfortable in the tourney
practice room or they would be there yet they grate on one another in the casual
room. The budget tourney decks are aggravated when they lose to cards they
would never see if they were playing competitively. The casual combo players
are irritated if they feel like they are losing to the “tournament” decks they
are trying to avoid, and the “because I have these cards” decks probably feel
beset on both sides. This is understandable to an extent but a lot of this
angst could be mitigated.

Well, 95% of games played in the casual room are played without
a sideboard. Think for a second about what that means. That means players are
sitting down to a completely wide open room with only 60 cards at their
disposal. If you play competitive magic at all then you know how difficult it
can be to try and fit all the answers to a known
metagame into 75 cards. Yes, I am suggesting one of the biggest problems contributing to the atmosphere of
acrimony that permeates the casual room at times is that building a deck to
play in the casual room is in some ways actually MORE difficult than building a
deck to compete in your local PTQ. You absolutely have to be able to deal with
huge fatties, enchantments, artifacts, recursion etc. all in just 60 cards –
and all this supposedly without counterspells or land/hand denial (which are
deemed unfun – as compared to sproutswarm + doubling cube?) and ideally without
running cards that are dead in certain matchups. Because it is nearly
impossible to build a fun deck that can answer all of these questions people
inevitably run into the problem of not being able to do anything against at
least one strategy – which is never fun.

So why is the default option in the casual room 1 game –
which naturally doesn’t allow sideboarding? If people want to play just one
game then by all means they should have the option to select that, but because
it is the default people by and large go with the flow and leave it in place
leading themselves inextolerably down the road to frustrationsbourough (I’ve
never been there but I’m sure it must be in northern New Jersey).

“But wait” you are probably saying to yourself. Didn’t he
just introduce this piece with a little song and dance about how he never
played much in the casual room. If you are you would be correct. Yet I have
played there some and found it to be a less than pleasant experience with more
vitriol spewed at me over a couple hours than I encounter during most weeks in
the tourney room and queues. Additionally I recently debuted a Heartwood
Storyteller deck I had been meaning to make for some time. It was made only for
fun with no aspirations to greatness – the perfect candidate for the casual
room. I present the key element to it for you here:

4 Heartwood Storyteller
4 Joiner Adept
3 Tin Street
Hooligan
3 Indrik Stomphowler
3 Riftwing Clouskate
3 StalkingYeti
3 Mystic Snake
4 Deadwood Treefolk
4 Coiling Oracle
4 Civic Wayfarer

Just creatures (befitting the storyteller), plus a manabase consisting mainly of painlands, karoos, and
manlands, with a few Snow covered lands thrown in for use with the Yeti. No
sideboard - since you never get to use one in the casual room!

This isn’t a good deck in any sense of the word, but it is pretty fun (for me) to play after a
couple of hours grinding in the queues. It is with this
deck that I’ve logged more than a few hours in the casual room lately and
encountered the attitudes described above – even though this deck sports nothing
but creatures! What could be easier to deal with than creatures? Maybe the room is misnamed, maybe we can’t agree on an
definition of casual, but Wizards: please give us back our sideboard so that we
might retain our sanity!

My first taste of written magic strategy came from the revised edition guidebook which opened with a description of two wizards "dueling", casting fireballs and summoning creatures culminating in the summing (remember creatures used to be "summon" spells) of the Lord of the Pit. The Planeswalkers ask the question: what if more than two wizards get involved in a duel? Our first taste of what this might be like was answered yesterday as Liliana Vess was unveiled.

 

Liliana Vess, as revealed after completion of Wizard's puzzle in the 8/27 edition of the Planeswalkers minisite:

 

 

 

The text of the completed puzzle is also revealing:

 

"Here is an exclusive planeswalkers rules preview:
Creatures can attack planeswalkers. If a creature does attack one of your planeswalkers your creatures can block it as though it were attacking you. If a planeswalker is dealt combat damage it looses that much loyalty" (courtesy BigJay)

 

Wow. No power or toughness. Instead these key stats are replaced by the "loyalty" value (presumably the stat in the lower right hand corner). If the card is played face up in front of you the top arrow on the left side of the text box points towards your opponent: "up", the other two arrows point towards you or "down". In addition closer analysis of the first ability gives us some clue as to how timing on these abilities might operate. Since very few discard abilities or spells operate with instant timing it is a reasonable assumption that all planeswalker abilities are played as sorceries (and likely once a turn) by the appropriate player.

 

These basic assumptions combine with the information given in the "clues" to raise more questions. If planeswalkers can be attacked can they be damaged by other means? Can I incinerate a planeswalker? What happens when a planeswalker "runs out" of loyalty? How important will loyalty be?

 

Well some of the above questions delve into the unknowable, it seems like we already have a few clues to the last question. In examining the abilities we find a +1 Loyalty effect that allows your opponent(s) (presumably) to cause you to discard a card of your choice - probably every turn. That is a major disadvantage. Yet is corresponds nicely to "your" first ability. A vampiric tutor effect that you can use twice even if Liliana affects the game in no other way - thats pretty powerful considering that a demonic tutor effect now costs nearly as much at 2BB. Finally we come to an ability that cannot be used with Liliana's base level of loyalty. While as a contained card she can reach 8 loyalty (if your opponent obliges you) this indicates that there may be ways to manipulate loyalty beyond just the use of planeswalker abilities. The effect itself: only a mass reanimator of every creaure in any graveyard. In other words: a game winning effect. So while loyalty manipulation might be out there it probably won't be cheap.

 

As interesting as Lili's abilities are taken individually there are some amazing synergies built into her as well. For instance, that discard disadvantage can be negated if the first card you search for is a dodecapod (or madness, or guerilla tactics). Even if you don't have something to immediately punish discard the looming threat of her mass reanimation is a built in deterrent to gun ho discard, altenatively you could use any discard your opponent chooses to use to stock your yard for a zombie break out.

 

This leads to the other major question that we have some room to speculate about: what happens when a planeswalker "runs out" of loyalty? Essentially, there would seem to be two options. The first is that the planeswalker is then sacrificed, or shuffled into your deck, or somehow leaves play. The second option is that once you use all of your loyalty "currency" the planeswalker you "summoned" will switch sides - reverse loyalties. If this is the case suddenly another possibility opens up - what if you want to "donate" your planeswalker to your opponent, using your loyalty and then flipping them so that you can then use the "up" arrow ability (in this Liliana's case: discard). Perhaps the uneven number of ability uses for Liliana's "main" tutoring ability is a clues that such a "donation" will require either your opponent's complicity or the expenditure of additional resources.

 

Even though Liliana have provided  a number of insights shed light on itriguing possibilities I guess we'll have to have to wait a little longer to get the full story on Planeswalkers.

It has been awhile since we've had to contend with Overrun in a limited format and there are relatively few stomach punches like it. Sure, TPF has tromp but tromp can be forcast more easily by its mechanic (domainish land requirements), and thus can be anticipated more accurately. Overrun can come out of nowhere.

Yesterday I was playing an online 8-4 Xth edition draft, I had drafted a GWb deck, splashing black for removal and creature recycling. Not the greatest limited deck but one that always has a chance to win a game on the back of a pretty solid curve on the crucial 3-4-5 drop slots in X. I got matched up against a solid player with a rating in the high 1700s also plaing GW with a splash. Game one I kept a three land hand but never drew a 4th and eventually succumbed, game 2 I curved out smoothly and scored a flawless victory.

In the final game I was in control of the board thanks to a tree top bracered juggernaught and & a bracered Skyhunter patrol. Tree top bracers are a slightly under rated enchantment, granting a power boost and evasion that is superior to flying since "reach" creatures cannot block them. Don't pick them high but they can be very solid 21-22nd cards (you should almost always be playing 18 land if you are in green in XXX draft).

I also had an angelic wall in play (boarded in after seing 2x elvish riders in game 1), femerf archers, youthful knight and a pincher beetle. They were staring down the same pair of elvish riders, and a trio of elves of one type of another & a kavu climber (I think I got everything there) I'd been wearing him down and he was at 4 - I had a essence drain in hand. I was at a comfortable 14 and my opponent was at 3.

After attacking to put my opponent down to 4 I paused. Assessing the board my opponent had to either keep topdecking flyers or a wrath in order to stabalize. His only true out was Overrun. Counting up the damage I could survive an overrun if I killed one of his 3/3. On the other hand the only flyer he could topdeck the could survive my essence drain was a Serra Angel. I rolled the dice and passed the turn. My opponent type "TDFTW - I'm so lucky" and I knew he had draw Overrun.

I immediately kicked myself for not offing a rider, but tried to convince myself that I had made the right play after all the only card, in the whole set, that kills me there is overrun - nothing else in the set wins him that game in one card, what are the chances? (1/368). But in the cold light of a new day I realize that not killing the riders was a major blunder of the kind you can't make if you are planning on adding to your pack pile.

First of all: *IF* an overrun is in this card pool there is a pretty good chance my opponent has it, we were both heavy green and I didn't have it. We had both run through better than half our deck, which further increase his odds of seeing it. The most timportant point is that having realized that he had an out (however remote) I made the error of playing the odds in a win or lose proposition when I had a choice to opt out of that session of russian roulet. If I killed those riders the is no card in the set that he could have drawn to immediately win the game - the next worse card (wrath) was negated by the fact that I would be dropping a 7/7 trampling multani the next time I saw a forest. Serra angle (or disenchant effects, holyday) would merely have bought time, forcing successive top decks.

The lesson - recogize when you have a dominating board position and make sure you know the card pool. Realize that sometimes playing to win means making sure your opponent cannot win with one top deck. Especially when your opponent is playing forests in XXX and your only removal is sorcery speed.

In short the play I made maximized my chances of winning on my next turn but decreased my chances of winning over all since it kept alive his chances of winning in one card. 

On Divergent Tendencies:

Magic Online has always been different than its cardboard progenitor, it follows slightly different rules, the major difference being the "chess clock"; allows for entirely different formats, like Vangaurd, Momir Basic, and Pauper; and does not possess the historic card depth required or older formats. Indeed even online extended is impacted because of this last difference ($75 for an Orim's chant anyone?).

In order to try and plug this latest gap (to some extent) Wizards is releasing the "Master's Edition" online-only set due to hit virtual shelves near you in about 3 weeks. In this online only format they walk all over the official reprint policy on reserved cards (Juzam and friends):

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/products/reprintpolicy

To quote from that link:

"The complete list of reserved cards appears at the end of this document. Reserved cards will never be printed again in a functionally identical form. A card is considered functionally identical to another card if it has the same card type, subtypes, abilities, mana cost, power, and toughness. No cards will be added to the reserved list in the future. No cards from the Mercadian Masques set and later sets will be reserved. In consideration of past commitments, however, no cards will be removed from this list. The exclusion of any particular card from the reserved list doesn't indicate that there are any plans to reprint that card."

Wizards are now releasing functionally identical online cards specifically to be used in tournament play online. I happen to agree this this does not violate the spirit of the reprint policy in that it does not compromise, and may even increase, the value of the existing hard copy cards. The semantics of this particular decision have been argued ad nauseum on this and other forums. Whether this online release technically violates the reprint poilcy is not really the point. The real questions is simply another example of MTGO and "cardboard" magic following different rules at the same time the Wizards may nominally be attempting to reconnect players to certain formats.

What does this mean for Magic and Magic Online in the future? All previous evidence to pointed to divergent policies. How far can the two versions of this game we play get from one another and remain essentially the same? While "exploration of design space" as Rosewater might put it regarding the explosion of formats allowed by MTGO may be critical for the long term health of the game I can't help but wonder if Wizard's should be taking some more steps to simultaneously tie the two branches of Magic together. The biggest step would be in allowing players to tie there online and "IRL" identities together allowing their ratings to translate being settings.

While this path is fraught with the possibility of fraud the possible boons to both online and "real life" magic might very well outweigh those disadvantages. Would individuals allow their friends to use their accounts as freely if that individuals performance impacted the number of byes they received at the next GP? How many magic pros really have the time to sits on their barn's computers boosting their ratings anonymously? But most important: if you could qualify for crossover events or carry your online rating into "real" tournaments and visa versa wouldn't that boost all around participation? I think so, but for the time being I am left wondering whether the Master's Edition release is yet another example of cardboard Magic rules being disregarded when it comes to Wizard's online empire or whether it is the first sign of an attempt to cull the divergent tendencies within our game(s).

Limited Options

The evolution of a Limited format over the course of a block
is nearly as interesting as that of the Block Constructed format itself. Block Constructed, at its best, is generally driven by the health of the
rock-paper-scissors metagame and the innovation of deckbuilders. Meanwhile,
virtually the only changes that appear to occur to a Limited
format are generated by adding a set to the puzzle. However, in many ways the
influx of new cards into a Limited format may usher in changes at least as
dramatic as those experienced in the corresponding Constructed environment –
and they are experienced in a more personal way, since in the world of Limited
you are always your own deck designer and innovator.

The largest change that occurs over the course of a Limited
season is the shift from drafting-to-deck to drafting-to-archetype. Within the
confines of a one set card pool, certain “best” decks can be built out of a
given combination of commons. These decks, supplemented by the addition of a couple
key uncommons, are the building block of the format. They allow us to get our
feet wet and understand what mechanics and interactions will be the most
powerful in the new environment.

A great example of “building to a deck” was the Ivory Giant
deck that won more than a few people piles of packs during TSP-TSP-TSP limited.
The goal was simple; pick up some efficient white beaters (Benalish Cavalry,
Knight of the Holy Nimbus etc.) and ideally two or more Ivory Giants. Because
you had three packs, it was fairly easy to come to the table loaded with bears –
hit your opponent for 4-6 damage and then the Giant comes out and allows you to
alpha strike for another 7-9 damage accomplishing the bulk of your work for
you. If you were able to suspend Giants on back to back turns you were sitting
in fine shape indeed. This strategy paired with removal was very successful
during TTT draft but fell off a cliff after Planar Chaos was introduced.

One reason is that it depended to a degree on its namesake Giant. Early white beaters are solid but need a plan to finish – if you never
saw a Giant, you could audible into the W/U evasion deck or do your best to load
up on removal and go W/R and try and push your men through for the last few
points. The introduction of PLC cut the number of Giants down enough that what was once a
solid plan turned into a crapshoot.

Archetypical drafting naturally comes to the fore in a
mature 3 set draft. For example: in TPF, you can draft R/G(x) successfully in at
least two different archetypes. You can use the plethora of aggressively costed
creatures in both colors in combination with green pump and combat tricks to
curve out and win a game out of the starting gates – you can also use a slow
rolling approach - turn 1 Uptopia Micron, Turn 2 Thallid Shell Dweller is also a
start that will eventually overwhelm most decks (godforbid you draft Sprout Swarm in addition!).

The path to these two archetypes may not always be clear
initially (though sometimes you first pick a Tromp the Domains and run with it),
and there is certainly cross over in terms of how best to outfit the removal
suite. You can reliably expect to access multiple pieces of red removal in FUT
pack, but you may or may not get that Riddle of Lightning specifically. Being
actively aware of how your deck is progressing and how it will be built is a
great way to be a more efficient drafter, and being efficient and economizing
your playable picks is the one of the keys to pilings packs into your
collection tab.

The larger variety in a card pool has enormous consequences
for your initial goals when trying to read signals in a draft. In TTP and TPF
more than one promising draft has been undone by the prospect of hoping to pick
up blue removal in the Planar Chaos pack. One pack is simply too small a sample
to plan on picking up something whose
function can’t reliably be duplicated within the same pack. This is the key difference between drafting to a
deck and drafting to an archetype. Far far too often in draft discussions of
mature block we base draft plans on irreplaceable cards, you cannot count on
drafting a specific card, even a common, out of a single pack. Unless you
really, really want a Dashed Hopes! That you can probably count on

edit - I wrote this in Word before posting and the spacing and formatting came out truly awful, sorry about that.

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