The Jitte
A Magic the Gathering Blog

A strange thread over at the MTGO official boards was discussing how to balance Mormir Basic. Weird eh? How do you balance a random format? Yeah, we should nerf the Ace card in poker, its too powerful.

Anyways somebody mentioned that Shah of Naar Isle gave them reason to believe that fire lands would be in a future set. I took a look at the card and didn’t come to the same conclusion, however I did see a witty bitty City of Brass in the corner. My money is on seeing City of Brass in future block instead of an entire subset of “fire” lands.

How do you have a fire plains anyway? Or a fire forest? I smell mana burning.

Take a look:

I like how the old Arabian Nights City of Brass says “SUFFER 1 damage”.

Risky, the first commenter on my blog, embarrassed me. Risky does take the time to review more than the tournament power of cards by appreciating some of the art. Sorry Risky, and thanks for breaking my comment virginity. He didn’t get top billing so I really didn’t pay attention to his reviews. Is there a reason? ;)

I have no idea how he got to this site. The search engine spider bots are being sneaky.

Sheldon Menery, one of Magic’s level 5 judges, is is not afraid to swim naked. It would make sense to explain how I found this post but the explanation would surely cause the fabric of space and time to implode on itself. I am sneaky like ninja.

Now I have no idea if the Wizo censor board will object to this but a funny exchange happened on the official MTGO boards which I’ll quote here:

The Hutt: Quite the literalist now, are we?
Emoticon: When I was little, my parents beat me with a dictionary.
Shane Gooseman: I was beat with a leather belt.
Emoticon: And how do you feel about the fashion industry?
Shane Gooseman: I don’t know, how do you feel about spelling bee’s?

Javasci, who I’ve talked about before produced another “duh” article over at puremtgo. Titled “A New Player´s Guide to Constructed Tournament Deckbuilding“, the article is nothing more than a waterfall of blah, blah, blah, don’t play bad cards.

The best way of steering new players in the tournament direction would probably be sitting them down and blasting intense magic theory inside their newbie brains. Then giving them a netdeck to play while you watch and provide advice and tips. Subject to the limitation of a website article, this strategy would ultimately fail.

So what then? What kind of advice would you give a new player who is about to enter their first constructed tournament?

Find a good netdeck with solid results, don’t change a thing, watch others play it, then have a go. -or- ( my personal favorite ) Don’t play in tournaments until you know what your doing.

Javasci’s constructed rating at the time of this post? 1591. Which if you don’t know, is bad.

—-

I’d like to leave this post with a little positive note.

A super sweet article over at MTGsalvation.com rocks my world with this bit of text:

“I run him ( Orgg )because I remember him when he was beautiful. (Orgg has been in my spell check dictionary for about ten years now. I didn’t get around to adding my last name until two years ago.)”

Beautiful stuff, there is even a clever deck idea to boot!

I didn’t think it was possible but Javasci wrote up an entire article about changing bad cards out for mo betta ones. I swear I can squeeze more blood from this rock!

“Card Insertions are always accompanied by removal of the same number of cards as you insert,”

…

“In a deletion, it is one card not being good enough and being taken out. You then need to fill the hole. In an insertion, it is one card being necessary for the deck, and needing to make space for that card.”

…

“When you tap a land for mana, you get mana!”

Ok, I made that last one up, but I think I’ve made my point.

As if to prove my point entirely brainburst.com’s newest article contains “alot”. No space and obviously no editing process. Oh look, another gem! “Either way they want have enough mana or no colored. This is just too easy. ” Won’t mb?

One last thing before I abandon this topic. Don’t want to be the guy who upholds the magisphere to my own personal standard of writing, especially since I’m no expert myself. This non-expert wants to rip on a Londes.com article before I cease my criticism.

Right away, instead of a clever opening line, a statement that gets you hooked and interested in reading the article your greeted with some sort of editors note. A note that forced me to look up a word that probably hasn’t graced any sentence since dinosaurs stomped the earth. Rote? What? Dude, its a noun, not an adjective you can apply to the noun “decktype article”.

-10 points for a lame opener.

-10 points for using an archaic word.

-10 points for using it wrong.

The second paragraph tries to convince you not to underestimate the decktype using words such as “plethora” and vis a vis.

-10 points for using plethora. Overabundance, not “many” or “various” or “a multitude”. This word is abused, raped even, everyday.

-10 points for using vis a vis. A phrase that should of been left to die in the 18th century. Of course, the author uses this wrong as well. Should take some more points off. We know when you cast Castigate you see your opponents entire hand.

Third paragraph? A disclaimer. That means 3 paragraphs into a deck article, nothing substantial about Simic Tron. Nothing about Chord of Calling in tricky morph creatures, nothing about Tron pieces, nothing of substance.

-20 for having 3 paragraphs of no real substance.

I didn’t read the rest of the article. Writing this post completely turned me off. 70 points off, three paragraphs in. If you think grading is tough, the english teacher that almost failed me grade like that. I really should thank her.

A couple weeks ago I played a game against a member of 2old2play who was testing for a PDC league starting at the beginning of April. The relaxed time requirements of weekly league play appeals to me at the moment. Participating in a 4-5 hour PDC event is just not possible with my current work schedule. During evening hours I’ll usually boot up MTGO to watch some games on my second monitor. Gotta keep up with the meta you know? Thats really the extent of my participation.

I’m also a big fan of organized play in a league or clan. The randomness you encounter otherwise is frustrating and annoying. I like when I know what to expect from my MTGO experience. The casual room is just a mess. Either I play a tournament deck, a goodstuff rare deck, or my opponent concedes the second he starts losing. Not much fun. The reason I like PDC so much is because I know the kind of experience I’ll get in a PDC game. Most players playtest, so I’ll always get a full game. Besides the occasional Terminates or Snow-lands, the power level is cheap and affordable by all.

You can see how I was psyched to play in a league. The only requirements for entry are that your over 25 and hate losing to Timmies. I got contact information, browsed the forums, was accepted into their clan by Pearly. Here is the PM I received from Pearly, a Captain of the 2old2play MTGO clan.

“Also, tell the guys in the chat room that you have received a response from me and, until we can get you officially admitted, you may consider yourself in the clan. That means you can play in the league. I will grant you access to the clan forum so you can read the “rules” and sign up. Also, lots of good info there. ”

Seems simple right? Join up, get into their forum system, and play. The league rules are also simple. Be in the clan, make a proper deck, play your games. Murphey’s law of course kicked in.

Almost at the same time I was intrigued by the 2old2play league a couple members of the pauper community and I decided to start a clan. Why? Mostly because the 3 of us got along really well and always had good times together. One of the members is hilariously funny the other shares a occupation with me. Overall we make a great group. So we went through the channels and started a official MTGO clan. What that means is we get a MTGO chat room all to ourselves and neat tags by our name. That it. 2old2play doesn’t like that. Apparently, I say that because it is not on their website, it is a rule that I must be in their official MTGO clan or I can’t play in the league.

DENIED ENTRY

Why? I don’t know. The 2old2play MTGO clan is too large to fit into one clan, so really they have several clans. That means these clans serve no communication benefit. You could only communicate with one “subset” of members through your clan channel. It seems they use the 2old2play chatroom ( /join 2old2play ) more often and even have their own Ventrillo server and forums for communication purposes.

I couldn’t understand this. It is my opinion that I was being denied entry into their clan and participation of their league because of pure technicality. A rule that is not posted, not public, and very much so not a requirement for entry into their clan. I pressed further. You can see from this chat transcript with the captain Pearly I tried to make state my case, and seek further clarification of the rules. I’ll admit, I was getting angry and frustrated over this.

Not because I would die without their pdc league. But because:

( I know I’m going to get flak for saying this )

THIS IS ABSURDITY STUPID

I realize now there is more chat transcript that I must of missed. Pearly informed me they she was chatting with other captains of the clan on Ventrillo. I asked if I could attend and talk. She said they were playing and couldn’t. Chat was getting no where. It was funny in a way. She asked “Do you have Ventrillo?” and I replied “I do now”, instantly downloading the application. The conversation died at that point so I browsed the threads at the 2old2play forum, found the IP address and port and got onto the program ( had experience from my Halo PC days ). After some mic problems I voiced my point but hit the same dead end.

The conversation followed the transcript with me pointing out again that the MTGO clan feature is entirely useless in their case besides a tag by their name. The response? Persuasions to recruit my current friends, use their system, they are better. Basically from the voice chat I was left with a ultimatum. “Its us or them”.

Sometimes I take things too personally, but this bothered me. I was essentially being forced to choice between 2 groups of people. Denied membership because the MTGO program doesn’t allow multiple clans. You can see from the chat transcripts that even Pearly believes this wouldn’t be a problem is MTGO didn’t have a clan feature. So really, the only reason I am being denied entry is that MTGO restricts you to one clan. A piece of programming code is preventing me from playing in a league.

“7:38 gnawph: what if MTGO didn’t have a clan feature?
7:38 pearly_54: in game, that is
7:39 gnawph: what does joning the “mtgo clan” have to do with playing magic as part of a community?
7:39 pearly_54: that would actually solve the problem”

Where do I go from here? Well because this blog isn’t exactly promoted of published right now I wanted to give Pearly and the MTGO 2old2play clan a chance to respond to this entry. So I sent her this PM:

“Hi Pearly,

I am disappointed I am denied participation in your league because of a pure technicality. I think your unstated rule about MTGO clans is unfair to people with multiple groups of friends and provides no real benefit to your clan. I have a unpublished MTGO blog in which I’ve wrote about my experience with 2old2play. I do not promote the blog, but hope too starting in April.

My experience will be public. It would be unfair to post negative information about you and your clan without giving you a chance to respond. I will update the linked post with any content you’d like to accompany it. I would not like this turn into some kind of publicity outrage or controversy.

I’m just a guy who posts opinionated content about his MTGO experiences.

-John, aka gnawph ”

We’ll see what happens.

Since I don’t read starcitygames.com or brainburst.com as much as I used too I must of missed out on hearing about this for months. There has been a excellent MtG videocast produced by a guy named Mr. Orange. I think I faintly remember watching this before but writing it off as simply an experiment that was destined to burn out quickly. Much to my surprise the videocast is some quality material.

The content is really diverse and well executed. Bonus points for making fun of 3D avatars for MTGO 3.0.