Note: I understand that you can never get exact numbers, but that is not the point. The point of this is to give you an idea on how to think about sideboarding, because it is easy to make mistakes with it.
For the record, I decided to stop using money on WotC in general after the Magic 30 debacle and I am not going to start spending money on the game until they make huge changes to their management and philosophy. Obviously, the amount of money I used to spend is not going to make a dent on their margins, but at the same time, if I don’t feel like I’m contributing to the game the existance of which is actually worthwhile, why should I use any money, when its making me feel bad?
Red has struggled to find its place in the card advantage game. Back in the early days there was Wheel of Fortune
and similar effects, which had a lot of potential, but were also highly situational. Then there was looting like Faithless Looting
, but in order to differentiate between blue and red, this was nerfed into rummaging, where you discard first and draw later.
While rummaging is still going on regularly in cards like Thrill of Possibility
and Big Score
, red has also had impulse draw for a while now. Like so many other recurring mechanics without an official name, this has been named after the first card where it appeared, Act on Impulse
. Impulse draw is basically card advantage, but only available to you for a limited time. I have limited this specifically to exiling the top card or cards of the library and being able to play those cards within a specific timewindow. I have disregarded any Alchemy shenanigans, because I don’t want to take those seriously. Also, I’ve left out anything that lets you play those cards without playing their manacost or lets you play from your opponents library.
I guess they really don’t want people to play Standard.
Short one this time.
Aaron Forsythe, the VP of design at WotC, tweeted this out four days ago:
Over the past few years, Standard play has dried up in many stores. I have my own list of possible reasons, but I’d love to hear from you about your store community. Why has sanctioned Standard play declined relative to other formats in your store?
Having to ask is really actually kind of embarrassing… I don’t mean asking in general, but in this case. It should be pretty obvious why they have been driving people away from the format.
This was calculated based ont he Baldur’s Gate Open. I’m pretty sure the other Opens work a bit differently, but this probably gives you an idea.
It would seem that despite all fears to the contrary, Arena has actually sort of brought back the previously forgotten art of deckbuilding.
Caveat: I’m not going to go into how to play MtG competitively without spending much money. There’s an easy answer for that: Be good enough to be sponsored for the cards or have strong enough network to be able to loan cards. In both cases this can only happen after initial investment, unless you are very lucky with the latter one.
Well, I managed to forget to do this regularly, so here’s all the 21 parts in this 10 hour playlist.