On Pricing

There's been a lot of discussion about pricing in Magic regarding premium product, lately. Peasant Kenobi lays it all out in a way that I think is legit. (TCC also has a strong take on this.)

I honestly do not understand why Wizards has not taken the lessons of the past to heart.

Alt-art reprints that are super rare? Awesome, the community loves them, and some are willing & able to pay for them. We saw this in the Zendikar and Amonkhet reprints-all of which still go for premium prices. Secret Lair products are quite popular-and understandably so. 

Essential game pieces that are super rare? It starts small- the distaste, the apathy- but it keeps growing and eating at the community. Your friends, already pressed for time and money, can't play as often, can't pay for important game pieces...and suddenly YOU are pressed for time and money and...wait. How many sets have come out? How much is it to play a deck you love?

Next thing you know, Magic doesn't matter-or at minimum, it doesn't matter enough for you to pay for new cards. 

There is a difference between premium product and premium game pieces.

Having premium product means blinged out game pieces-foils, art, etc. Presentation. Having premium game pieces is basically a fee-to-way win structure: you pay more, you win more. Guess which one will burn out your customer base?

There is also a difference between customer attraction and customer retention.

Having formats of smaller, generally more affordable card pools helps bring people in. Reprinting cards so those new people can play a variety of formats is how you keep them! People don't play in a vacuum: they play with other people. And other people who have been playing Magic for a long time don't just play Standard. 

They don't have to reprint needed cards to oblivion, because crashing the secondary market would be a horrible thing to game stores. But, there is no reason why WotC can't print them so that new-and old!- players can have access. More people with access = more people playing the game = more money long term. 

At the moment, it just feels like the playerbase than can be milked is getting milked for all they're worth, and everyone else-the game isn't for them.

The Blue discussion

I thought this post on Reddit's Legacy forum and the subsequent discussion to be interesting. People take into account the big problem-an inability to ban Brainstorm-and what the splash damage from that problem is.

There are good thoughts on deck diversity and how to both preserve the cards that people love to play, while trying to unearth better answers to the problem of some seriously overpowered newcomers.

Busywork

"You're the busiest person I know during the pandemic," Jason tells me.

Maybe? I don't know. I've been trying to arrange to play games nearly every night I can, reading when that isn't available. I don't get to go out, and while I do enjoy videogames, they are only occasionally available.

Besides; Doom Eternal has a unfun baked into that cookie.

A quick aside; Doom Eternal is glitchy for me. I stutter step about every ten to fifteen feet 'in game'. But let's say that this wasn't a problem AND I didn't have to do stupid registration for a game mode I'll never use AND the instruction screens were readable, AND they actually did story setup.  

Fine. It would still have this problem: walking on a tightrope isn't fun. There are multiple scenes in Doom Eternal where I have to make precise movement: either because I am jumping over the void, or because on one side of me is pain (electrical fence, fire, etc) and on the other side of me is the void.  

This is not fun. It has never been fun. It will never BE fun. Especially in a game that practically insists that you Tigger about in a desperate attempt to simultaneously stay alive and murder everything in the room.
It has made me hope that the game is over sooner rather than later, because the only excuse I have to play it is because a) I own it and b) pandemic. 

So yes, I am trying to stay busy. I'm even playing Magic: Arena and that isn't fun either.

Aside 2: Magic Arena's unfun comes in four different flavors. The first is one of mismatching: playing my crappy, scraped together collection of cards that they meagerly drip out is fine, so long as I'm playing against similar power levels. It isn't so much fun when I slam face first into the person with six planeswalkers, or a powered up, all rares R/W Zenith Flare deck.  

The second one is the dual currency. You cannot grind in Arena. The "money" they give you is worthless. Stop doing that. Either it is valuable or it isn't. If you want my fucking $20 to unlock a higher tier, just say that. Anything else is predatory and there to do one thing: disassociate people from the distinction between real money and "unreal" money so they don't understand that they are spending more than they should. 

The third one is on me: the transition between paper and electronic Magic has lead to unfun gameplay moments. The shortcuts I would use to do something work differently under the strict (but correct!) rules processing on Arena. I am trying to use this as a learning moment, not an enraging one, but it's not always easy. 

Finally, there is the lack of interaction. This is something Arena cannot fix. I have had "games" where I waited until the timer ran out on my opponent often enough that I won. Every game I play is marred by the experience of doing nothing while my opponent takes their turn. Nobody interacts; Magic is stripped down to cogs in a clock and as beautiful as that clock is, wiped from any human interaction, the game becomes  tiresome for me. I don't get to make friends and I don't know anyone playing so there's nothing to talk about. 

It did, however, make me appreciate what Twitch is useful for: If you're talking to an audience while playing, that provides an interaction that the opponent is unable to give you.  

However. It is true that I am staying busy. And I am trying to stay busy because without that, there is nothing to do but worry. There is much to worry about-not just the pandemic but the larger social, cultural landscape is deeply unsettling and frightening to me.

The work that I can do, I am doing. The support I can offer, I am doing my best to offer.

It is still difficult to focus and it is difficult to relax. Fun, when it arrives, is a bit like cocaine: I greedily take as much of it as I can, even when the moment isn't exactly appropriate. (I've played Arena at work, for example). Because it seems rare and fleeting.

I am reminded that I haven't built up community quite as much as I would like. I'm not bereft, I just have less people to interact with than would be comforting. These notions are oppressive on my brain and don't just make work difficult, they make doing the things I want to do difficult.

So I stay busy, working on Transformers decks, playing Star Realms, tweaking Magic decks, retiring some, beefing up others, while also trying to balance things in my life so I don't just peace out.

It's not easy. It's tiring, to be honest.

But it's also my responsibility to both continue to engage and to stay sane enough that I can do things to help make this situation better.

So I'm busy.

The Suggestion Box

After a few games this weekend, Jason gave me a few suggestions. We had a long chat about this, because balancing the tension between the cards and the pip requirements is a challenge. The green cards don't add to anything Starscream does but I need them to keep the ASP in business.

Jason pointed out how much damage I was getting off of Starscream's flips, in one game getting six damage from flips alone and suggested Rapid Conversion and Escape Route.

Rapid Conversion seems less useful: I really only want to funnel my transformations into Starscream and there's no way to reliably ensure that I'll draw it. Escape Route, as a one of though? That I can get behind. So long as I have an active Starscream it's likely useful and when I don't, it's a white and green pip to add to the Air Strike Patrol attacks or defense. It has the potential to do a lot of work in this deck and maybe even worth adding a second?

I'm so used to just adding in three copies of any effect that I need that trying to come up with the best configuration is a challenge. What's become very clear, however, is that adding 3x cards with green pips is not always going to be correct. In the case of Espionage, sure, because the build of the deck is going to skew towards use of discard effects, either via Major Shockwave or other battle cards.

But that isn't necessarily true of Enforcement Batons or Bashing Shield and that's the stage I'm at right now.

As I Say

I'm fairly sure that 'irony' doesn't apply here but it's certainly something that the day I make the statement

"Now, the upside is that the flip economy is concentrated mostly on Starscream. The level of complication is kept to a minimum but that doesn't mean I can let my attention lapse,"

I do just that.

In two of the three games I played with Jason, I skipped a transform with Starscream and in at least one of those two games, it would have changed the outcome from a loss to a win. The third game I can't be assured of a win, but missing three damage is a big deal.

Part of it is about practice; Both with the deck and with the pause, to make sure I'm taking one last consideration before acting. It takes a little practice because I've been Magic for so long that I'm used to being able to take actions after an attack, because you can still take actions after you do so.

In Transformers, once you attack, your turn is over. Which means that in Magic the strategy is that you want to hold everything back until the last moment-including, potentially your opponent's turn. In Transformers you want to stage everything correctly before an attack, trying to project which attacks will be the most effective, because you're locked in once that happens.

It's a long way of saying: I am making a habitual mistake carried over from another game entirely.

Better keep practicing.

Midrange Greens

So far, so good.

Except for the picture: OCTGN is kinda crap when it comes to image quality. Sorry about that. It's a new program, I'll try and get things better.

Anyway; there are a couple important elements so far; first, is the protection of Raider Tailwind. It's that character's ability that allows the planes to get a bonus from the green pips. Generally, that just means leading with everyone but Tailwind but it's important to note that if all the bots are untapped and Starscream has left the game, transforming one of the other raiders so it no longer has Stealth is an important key. 

Second; timing the plays out correctly is always good and here's a deck that wants to teach that. Starcream isn't always a plane, which means that Bombing Run does its most effective work when Starscream is in alt mode. 

Now, the upside is that the flip economy is concentrated mostly on Starscream. The level of complication is kept to a minimum but that doesn't mean I can let my attention lapse. Like many solid but not obviously overwhelming decks, this one wins in the margins of good play, where not making errors can save me from disaster. 

Still, the initial concept seems strong, now it's a matter of refinement.

Seekers

This started off as a "classic" Seekers deck, with Thundercracker and Skywarp, but the thematic elements of each of those characters all went in different directions.

So I thought that instead, it would be neat to have Starscream lead his own army of planes, doing chip damage with his flips, with the Air Strike Patrol swings in for extra damage with green pips.

Starscream 11*
Raider Visper 5*
Raider Tailwind 5*
Raider Nightflight 4*
Head-On Collision 3
Cooling Vents 2
Repair Bay 3
Improvised Shield 3
Reactive Armor 2
Aerial Recon 3
Smelt 3
Bombing Run 2
Dismantling Claw 3
Inspiring Leadership 2
New Orders 3
Frag Toss 2
Personal Targeting Drone 2
Force Field 2
HV Electron Breacher 3
Reprocess 2

The hope is to send Starscream Air Commander in first, using it's Bold 2 effect to get a solid hit in on an important character, then use Cooling Vents, Repair Bay and Reprocess to keep it alive long enough to get in multiple flips for damage, while attacking for 5+ with the Air Strike patrol. A Starscream flipping for 3 damage every other turn is a Bolt of Lightning on the regular and that's pretty good. In addition, sending one of the Air Strike Patrol in to take some damage means that Bombing Run can do quite a bit for you.

However, I don't want to pass up the greatness that Raider Tailwind can provide, attacking for base 5 with a defense of base 3 in the late game. Remembering that is a tool to use can be critical to close a game.

With Titan Masters coming out soon, and already testable online, cards like Sharpened Talons, Regenerative Core and High Five might but worth considering to help increase the density of green pips.

As it is, the Seekers deck seems to require savvy play to use your actions and upgrades for maximum impact. Dismantling Claw being scrapped by Reprocess to heal two and take out your opponent's best weapon is a heck of a move and this deck can help you pull it off.

I'll be getting some games in this week to tweak and improve it.

An Execution in Fury

I'm going to let Hunter-Killer rest now. Playing this deck has been interesting, but more importantly, exposed me to the joys of an incredibly focused deck. That focus has allowed me to get out of situations I was not certain I could escape. When my opponent is attacking for 10 on turn three, I definitely felt the pressure.

But topdecking answers is a hell of a way to win.

I stuck with Bedevil as the sideboard option but it didn't come up. I think it still would've been useful in this matchup, as I'd swapped them out for Sphere of Resistance, a card that Fuz's deck didn't care about.

But it's time to work on something else. Ikoria is nearly out in paper form, with lots of cool things to try, there are any number of decks in The Retired timeline and I've been messing with multiple decks in the Transformers game.

I've been able to play OCTGN lately to test some ideas, and I've really started to lean into some odd concepts. We'll see how those play out-but at another time. For now, I leave you with this:

4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Cranial Plating
4 Aether Vial
2 Ghostfire Blade
4 Ornithopter
4 Disciple of the Vault
4 Etched Champion
3 Arcbound Ravager
1 Hope of Ghirapur
2 Bomat Courier
3 Fling
3 Galvanic Blast
3 Swamp
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Great Furnace
4 Vault of Whispers
3 Mountain
4 Spire of Industry

SB:
3 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Tormod's Crypt
3 Red Elemental Blast
4 Bedevil
3 Duress