============= PARADISE POST ============= Issue 13. April 2004. This newsletter is sent to all MTGParadise.com Forum Members. To unsubscribe email contact@mtgparadise.com with your forum username and your account will be deleted. FEATURE SPONSORS – Advertisers email contact@mtgparadise.com ---------------- CARDSHARK - www.cardshark.com Cardshark is the ultimate marketplace for BUYING and SELLING collectable games. We currently support Magic, MAGIC ONLINE, and Lord of the Rings. There are NO LISTING FEES to start selling and all payments are made via PayPal. You'll be amazed at how easy it is to buy and sell cards with CardShark.com. Click this link and make a $10 purchase today and get a FREE BOOSTER PACK! http://www.cardshark.com/default.asp?referral=cardshark&source=mtgparadise --------------- Hello readers and welcome once again to the Paradise Post. While we have been a little bit light on for tournament action in the past few weeks there has still been plenty of stuff happening both in the world of Magic Online and good old fashioned card slinging. For those of you who don't know it, I'll let you in on how you can get involved in what is undoubtedly the best limited format there is. In addition to that, I'll be delving into the question of what the heck is going on with Magic Online including a rundown on how to go 13-0 and not win a bloody thing. The race to regionals is also heating right up; soon Australians and New Zealanders will take to the tables to determine who will be lining up at this year's Nationals. As the date draws ever closer many pundit are asking the question are we living through another black summer (or brown autumn as will be the case here)? Only time will tell, but I'll try to give you a bit of an insight into what you can expect to face. Anyway time she is a wasting so I think it's time to start bringing on the action. TEAM SEALED The team sealed season is upon us. This season is always a highlight with players getting together with their mates to form trios to take all comers. Despite the fact that the event is a PTQ, the mood is always friendlier than an average individual event. However, the competition for bragging rights is inevitably fierce and the banter at the top tables should definitely be something to see (or participate in)! The card pools are usually somewhere between pretty good and borderline psychotic with the larger card pools resulting in far more synergistic decks than can usually be made from even the luckiest draft. Speaking of draft, when the event gets down to the last 2 teams you can throw the form guide out the window. Team draft is without a doubt the format where you are likely to see some of the biggest brain explosions ever. My notable favourites came in an OTJ event where such classic picks as · One player cleverly took Springing tiger leaving another *ahem* solid green card in Overrun for the opposition · Obviously confused by this turn of events, a UW drafter from the other side decides that rites of refusal is CLEARLY better than Millikin. The things is that these slips can become the norm rather than the exception, when you add in non verbal communication with players that have developed only rudimentary signals and one player decides to tell his teammate "While I agree that Bonesplitter will be good in both of our decks, Fractured Loyalty will be far more synergistic for you because of that tooth you drafted in the last pack and there is little else for my deck." While in the meantime his mate is just watching him frantically flail his arms about thinking "what the heck is he doing? Bonsplitter is the nuts for me" and proceeds to snap it up leaving teammate A who signaled with about 2 seconds to panic and grab frantically at a good card- most likely the Fangren Hunter that their teammate was banking on getting in any event….classic team draft. Team sealed is also the event most likely to bring interstate players intent on stealing titles. Locals are always keen to defend their territory and no traveling team can expect an easy ride ANYWHERE. Look to Sydney and Canberra to provide the most fireworks as the short trip in either direction will provide plenty of incentive for out of town invaders. Be sure to check in with your TO so you too can join in the action. REGIONALS The countdown has well and truly begun for regionals. With less than a month to go now most keen players will be well into their testing or at the very least researching. Many European countries have already run their regional events and the picture emerging is Ravager. People have been clamping up artifact creatures everywhere! In fact, so much so that Oxidize has been creeping into affinity main decks. Many people are convinced that because of the power of Ravager the metagame is a bit stale, however there are still a reasonable number of viable decks at the moment with Astral Slide again coming to the forefront because of it's considerable creature control powers and Goblin Bidding staying strong because of it's utter ridiculousness with the power of Skullclamp allowing it to put most control decks to the sword with it's agro-combo approach, others are taking some inspiration from Gabriel Nassiff's PT deck and are Tooth and Nailing out huge monsters everywhere. The prevailing opinion seems to be that these are the main contenders. However, there is still hope for the more Rougish players with G/B cemetery getting so much attention on the net that many players are bound to turn out with it, whether they get their mana to work or not is another question altogether. To go out even further into the realms of the rogue a lot of people have been making Indestructible machines march lately. I'm sure there's a lot more stuff out there that perhaps people are keeping under their hats, for instance I haven't seen many storm copies of anything being put on the stack lately. One thing is for sure though, whatever you are sitting on, make sure it can deal with the frogmite, ravager and disciple led assault and a bunch of hasty Goblins coming from the beyond the grave. I'd say the most basic gauntlet at this point should include · Ravager · Goblin Bidding · Slide · Tooth and Nail · B/G Cemetery If your deck of choice is performing well against this gauntlet pay some attention to · MWC and U/W Control · Mono Red burn · Land Destruction All the best for your testing and look for the Paradise Post to keep you up to date as Regionals results come in! MODODOWN? As you are all probably aware the Darksteel release events on Magic Online caused major problems so much so that the servers packed it in and with it went league play. Apparently the good folks at WoTC had been working hard on the code for Leagues and Premier events and they had come up with some things that could possibly fix things back up and were ready to unleash these changes. They wanted to test, so they needed a beta environment… the deal sounded good free premier events and leagues as per usual beta but the prizes you win YOU KEEP. I logged on early in the morning and I saw that there were a bunch of leagues and premier events running, seemed good. No leagues had spawned for quite some time, less good but still acceptable. I joined the queue for 2 premier events, I had one decent card pool with some great cards but a bit light on removal on the other hand my second deck was all insane with Skullclamp leading the way ably backed up by mask of memory. After building I won my games quickly and joined 2 new events. I got into deck building and CRASH. No matter, I logged back in and found some leagues were up so I joined 2. One card pool was trashy so I discarded it and decided to go for gold in one league where I had yet another amazing card pool. I managed to play 2 matches and win them while entering my decks for the other 2 premiers and CRASH. To cut a long story short, in about 32 hours of clicking away on Modo I went 6-0 in my league but didn't have time to finish, I went 3-0, 2-0 and 2-0 in my premier events before they all decided to disappear after a crash with another never even getting off the ground. I also entered a few more queues that never got going and found time to confirm what I already suspected about my second league pool. Fair enough this was a beta environment so crashes are to be expected, but if the events are so crash ridden and bugged that 97% don't finish, offering prizes is just a gigantic tease to get server capacity. I am told that a lot of events finished right at the end of the beta, presumably rewarding those that logged on late in the piece just to see what happened while those who slogged it out the first 30+ hours of the beta get the shaft, very sloppy stuff indeed. If Wizards wanted to provide some incentive for testing on the beta perhaps they could have rewarded based on time spent testing the thing with penalties for a drop which would still maximize the chances of events finishing with good numbers of players while rewarding players on a slightly less arbitrary scale than "who was lucky enough to (a) do well in an event, be it by running the dodgy server gambit and timing out enough hapless opponents or actually playing Magic and (b) have that event come to an end." The beta did have it's moments though, harkening back to the days of broken extended environments and unbalanced Type 1 eras, for a few hours Magic Online players got to experience what extended and Type 1 pundits have long suspected….it's all about the coin flip. The trick here however was to lose, if you win the coin flip you obviously get to decide to play or draw, usually regarded as quite the advantage. But on this fateful day winning the coin flip meant that you got priority and when crashes or bugs occur, the guy with priority gets the short end of the stick. Stories were flying around IRC of the miraculous turn 1 victory where the game tried it's hardest to start, bringing up the play screen over and over again not getting to a point where anyone can do anything but still counting down on the clock. Eventually one party times out and BANG XXX is the winner, the game ended on turn 1. The news coming from the aftermath of the Beta seems promising though and if it results in us getting our events back then all the better. On another more general note what is it about Beta servers that make people go insane? Many of the chat areas ended up being closed off because of incessant spamming, plenty of it wasn't even legible. Why do people get an intense urge to mash their keyboards when in a beta? The server is unstable why put more stress on it? Write me and let me know if you have any insight (or if you are a masher yourself and can fully explain it) though I think this will be one for the ages. As always I encourage you to check out http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic/magiconline to get the full rundown. TEAM SEALED GP As I come towards the end of this addition of the Post both GP Bochum and GP Washington are underway. While Washington is only in it's early stages, Day 1 of Bochum is over and in an unprecedented turn of events Phoenix Foundation did poorly at a teams event! That's right, Kai and crew failed to make day 2 in what may be the biggest news in Team Limited for the entire year until we have another teams PT as it leaves Kai with no PT points for the event and still trailing in player of the year. Could we see a new player take the mantle? Check out http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgevent/gpdc04/welcome and http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgevent/gpboc04/welcome to see how things pan out. DON'T LOOK A GIFT FANGREN IN THE MOUTH In Dan's last article he referred you to Minga Wong's first outing on Star City Games. Now while I will agree that green is fairly weak, especially in Darksteel and that the article makes some great points- especially about people overvaluing Archers, I don't think Minga is giving the green cards their due or paying attention to the fact that it is sorely underdrafted. As a general rule if you are in a colour with no competition, ride it all the way to the bank. If a Fangren or Archers tables TAKE IT. You can get predators strike after pick 10, while other players are looking for board cards stock up on these babies. You want different equipment to everybody else, Fireshrieker is your friend, Neurok Hoversail finally has a home! If you are playing with Green anything, Blinding Beam is your BEST friend SPLASH IT. If you are forced to choose between Molder Slug and Oblivion Stone CALL A JUDGE. People this is probably your only chance to draft GW for years! If you pass on it now you may not get another chance. Some sample decks (GW included). GW 1x Arrest 1x Leonin Den Guard 1x Leonin Skyhunter 1x Luminous Angel 1x Raise the Alarm 1x Roar of the Kha 1x Auriok Glavemaster 1x Loxdon Mystic 1x Fangren Hunter 2x Predators Strike 1x Tel-Jihad Exile 2x Viridian Joiner 1x Oxidize 1x Tel-Jihad Wolf 1x Clockwork Vorrac 1x Fireshrieker 1x Isochron Scepter 1x Mask of Memory 1x Leonin Bola 1x Razor Golem 1x Skullclamp GRW 1x Blinding Beam 1x Fangren Hunter 1x Molder Slug 1x Predators Strike 1x Tel-Jihad Archers 1x Tel-Jihad Exile 1x Trolls of Tel-Jihad 1x Viridian Joiner 1x Wurmskin Forger 1x Stand Together 1x Tangle Spider 2x Tel Jihad Wolf 1x Fireshrieker 1x Granite Shard 1x Silver Myr 1x Talisman of Unity 1x Tangle Golem 1x Shatter 1x Electrostatic Bolt 1x Vulshok Beserker 2x Echoing Ruin Before I go I have a few "shout-outs" first of all to John Jordan who sent me an email which I failed to reply to because of my failure to move it to the right spot in my inbox. Thanks for the feedback mate, good to know someone reads far enough to actually get to the end and find my email! Also to Andrew Pirie and Dan Gow who both offered to send me PT footage, much appreciated guys. As always if you have any questions or feedback, don't hesitate to email me at securitron_ch@hotmail.com making sure to put something in the subject that will make me take notice amongst a myriad of other stuff. Thanks for reading, Craig Hong