So I tried playing Magic online via Cockatrice the other day after my little brother got me into playing it with cardboard. People who play online with that program are HUGE dicks.
So I tried playing Magic online via Cockatrice the other day after my little brother got me into playing it with cardboard. People who play online with that program are HUGE dicks.
Internet anonymity complex? I had a player in iPhone Carcassonne whom I was beating tell me I had a big ass the other day. Gotta upload that screenshot.
Really? I've never really faced douchebaggery on MtG:O before. Perhaps they were just isolated incidents?
Note that it was the free program Cockatrice, which has a much smaller (and presumably a more hardcore) userbase than MtG:O, and is notably less user friendly. It's entirely possible that they were just butthurt that a newbie was using their cardboard card country club to learn their little game.
The schism between Venture's and your experience, WUB, is simply because you are using different software. Venture, as I understand it, is using Magic Online. It's the official WOTC Internet Magic program and you have to sign up for it with a credit card and your own identity at least known to the people behind the program. Such there is anonymity is lacking and if you act like a dick you will get in trouble and can be banned from the program.
However, a program like Cockatrice (or Magic Workstation, which is the one I'm using) is are free and completely anonymous, and thus John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is in full effect. There is simply no barrier to entry, and no ramifications.
Another, very big Magic-related incident I deem worthy of a forum post. Yesterday, Alex Bertoncini was suspended for 18 months for repeated cheating. Bertoncini is quite the high profile player and won "Player of the Year" as handed out by the StarCityGames tournament series (StarCityGames being the biggest secondary market retailer for Magic cards). The PoY price earned him $10,000 as well as a set of Power 9 (the 9 most expensive magic cards). If you want to read up how boldly and how often the guy cheated, take a look at this article.
I randomly had 30 minutes to give away and WOW is Alex Bertoncini a raging cheater. I'm glad he got popped.
One of the largest reasons why I quit playing Magic was the cheaters. I qualified for a few Pro Tours that I couldn't attend due to financial constraints so if I ever made it to an event like that and saw THAT, I'd be livid. I need to find a sponsor to pay for my cards so I can come back and make some cash...
Putting a card in your hand rather than the graveyard? Drawing 3 cards for Brainstorm and not putting 2 back? Drawing 4 cards for Brainstorm IMMEDIATELY after getting a warning for the above? Drawing 8 cards to open a game? Playing 2 lands for one explore and then lying bold-faced when confronted?
There is a link to a video in the article. He plays his land for the turn, casts explore, plays another land, taps and untaps some land, decides to cast a spell, and then says "Hey, there are two explores in my graveyard. I don't think I played a land for it." and then plays another land.
In short, he played Explore, a card which allows a player to play a 2nd land during his or her turn once, on successive turns. The first turn he plays the normally allowed second land. The second time he plays not only the allowed 2nd land, but also a 3rd land. When confronted he pretends to have cast both Explores in his graveyard during the same turn.
Maybe some of the confusion for Neito comes from Neito thinking of the similarly named card Exploration, an enchantment which lets a player play an additional land during each turn it is in player. In fact, the name Explore is an homage to the card Exploration. Having two Explorations on the table would allow a player to play three lands per turn.
Same effect as playing 2 explores in the same turn. As a former level 3 judge and former borderline pro player, I was enraged that spectators were not allowed to call in judges when cheating was spotted. I get why they disallowed it but I think if that spectator is also a judge, that should allow some leeway. I saw so much cheating go unpunished...
No, Exploration wasn't my confusion. This block of text doesn't make it clear (to me, though i'm obviously not the intended audience) how he's cheating.
Draw, land 4, tank.
Explore, land 5 (second of the turn), tank.
Preordain, tank.
Push both (doing so in a way that probably gave him a peek at the bottom of his deck), draw.
Tank. Visibly count the number of Explores in your graveyard.
Play your third land for the turn – land six in total – and immediately pass.
I suppose my confusion comes from what "Tank" and "Push" mean. To me, he plays a land, plays two explores, and ends up with six lands, which as far as I can tell is legit.
I suppose my beef is with the article writer, though. Dromaro explained it fine; it just doesn't make sense the way the writer explained it. It's not clear that the explore is from a previous turn.
"Tank" is slang for stopping to think while playing. It derives from "going to the think tank". By "push both" he means that the guy put both cards he saw with the Scry ability of Preordain on the bottom of his deck.
I guess the writer does engage in a bit of too much slang.
Same effect as playing 2 explores in the same turn. As a former level 3 judge and former borderline pro player, I was enraged that spectators were not allowed to call in judges when cheating was spotted. I get why they disallowed it but I think if that spectator is also a judge, that should allow some leeway. I saw so much cheating go unpunished...
As far as I can tell (and I just asked in the rules forum of one of the most popular magic sites just to make sure), spectators have always been allowed to call a judge. I've also been told that spectators are supposed to call a judge and can also ask players to wait until the judge arrives (though the players aren't bound to it).
Wow, lucky bastard. Only suspended. 6 lands on turn 3 with 2 explores, and his opponent says he's good. I know fuck all about Magic, but I can fucking count.
Same effect as playing 2 explores in the same turn. As a former level 3 judge and former borderline pro player, I was enraged that spectators were not allowed to call in judges when cheating was spotted. I get why they disallowed it but I think if that spectator is also a judge, that should allow some leeway. I saw so much cheating go unpunished...
As far as I can tell (and I just asked in the rules forum of one of the most popular magic sites just to make sure), spectators have always been allowed to call a judge. I've also been told that spectators are supposed to call a judge and can also ask players to wait until the judge arrives (though the players aren't bound to it).
I've been out of the game for about 7 years but I can assure you that people were not allowed to do that. If what you say is accurate, I'm glad to hear it. I don't understand why (for example) the guy in the explore video didn't stop play on the spot and catch the asshat.
So catching up with Geeknights again I listened to the PAX Prime 2012 episode in which Rym and Scott discuss MTG a lot again. There's a couple of things I probably should clarify.
First of, yes, creatures are good now. Magic R&D has taken a step in recent years to make creatures much more competitive and useful, giving them built in card advantage and making them more cost-efficient and such.
Secondly, all new magic cards have black borders now. White borders were only used for Core Sets from Revised to 9th Edition. Starting with 10th Edition, those sets also have the much more popular black borders. Borders also help you distinguish between Alpha and Beta themselves, as the two sets have different corners. There's also gold borders which were used for commemorative sets in which they would print cards which would not be legal in tournament play, and silver borders for the sets Unglued and Unhinged, which contain joke cards which are also not legal for tournament play.
Thirdly, Rym wondered about the watermark symbol on Teysa, Orzhov Scion. This card is from the set Guildpact, which is part of the three set Ravnica block, which is set on a plane entirely covered in city-scape called Ravnica. The story is that Ravnica is ruled by ten guilds, which are each represented by a pair of the five colors of Magic. Each card in the Ravnica block which is associated with a guild because it uses the two colors of the guild gets a watermark with a symbol representing that guild, Teysa being a member of the black-white Orzhov Syndicate. You can read more about the other guilds here, or watch this Panel from PAX in which the Magic creative team discusses the guilds.
The original Ravnica block was released between the Fall of 2005 and the Summer of 2006. However, the block which is being released right now is a return visit to the plane, also featuring the guilds, aptly named "Return to Ravnica". I also recommend this talk by Aaron Forsythe, who is pretty much the head honcho at Wizards of the Coast for Magic the Gathering, in which he explains the context and the direction of how Magic developed in the last 10 years or so. The audio quality is a bit wonky and there is some inside baseball in there, but I think it's a good overview.
Heh... Fourth Edition was the last main set I saw regularly in play. I bought some Ice Age packs, but didn't really use the cards. I almost invariably played old-style type I with my mixed set of Revised, The Dark, Legends, Antiquities, and a handful of Fallen Empires cards.
I mostly played green creature decks, green/black decks, or blue/white. I was heavy on artifacts.
Back then, most people considered each expansion to be just an expansion to the total set of cards, and outside of strict tournament scenes, everyone built decks from an ever-expanding library across every set that came out. No one followed restrictions on cards beyond the 40 (or 60)-card minimum deck limit, the 4 of any one named card limit, and a small list of single-card restrictions (e.g., Sol Ring, moxes, etc...).
I was good at deck construction, so I tended to win most of the time in casual play. I often played with novelty decks as a form of trash-talk. (Once, a friend of mine ran a buy-in tournament at his house for a large number of people. I entered with a 250 card deck and still made it to the finals. One kid almost cried when this ridiculous monster beat his highly tuned 40-card burn deck.
I had a friend with seemingly unlimited cash for cards and a love of novelty decks. Decks where the other players at the table literally did not even get to play the game. Magic was best when it was new and simple.
I was obsessed with nonstandard means of victory: poison and deck depletion.
Most players had never heard of poison, or didn't realize how many cards allowed one to apply it to an opponent. Marsh Vipers plus some forest walk and a forest hag (to turn an opponent's land into a forest) was particularly nice.
I never successfully made a deck depletion deck that was effective, but I ran that same 250-card monster against someone who tried to do it. Guess who's deck depleted.
Combos like that are one thing. This guy had a level of "card synergy" that was just preposterous. He had 15 ways to kill you in 2 turns built into practically every deck, and a very good chance of getting a 3-4 turn winning hand (even if it took you 10 turns to eventually die) on his initial draw. He quickly became no fun at all to play against.
Guys like him are the reason I prefer Magic on XBL. I still play from time to time there, although since the latest one came out, not so much. Not that there's anything wrong with it, I think I'm just bored.
I had a lot of fun with Fallen Empires. I bought a box. I had a thrull deck and a thallid deck that I liked a great deal. Later on I built a griffin deck using the same "toss 'em all in" building philosophy you described, not caring about expansions or limitations, and had a little fun with that but once they started expanding the core rules in ways that allowed players to win every game by buying more cards, I was done.
I lost to deck depletion in the only tournament I ever played in. I had Feldon's cane, so I was almost able to just disintegrate him to death. Here was how he did it.
Howling Mine - Everyone draws more cards. Millstone - Discard cards from the top of your deck every turn. Island Sanctuary - he only draws one card while you draw two, and creatures are worthless for attacking unless they are flying or islandwalk. Disenchant - Oh, I see you found a clever card that might ruin things for me. Wrath of God - Oh, I see you got some flying/islandwalk creatures. I don't have any creatures. Nevinyrral's Disk - Oh, I see you've got a lot of cards now that might be dangerous, let's reset. Black Vise - You are drawing so many cards in your hand that you are having trouble playing them all. Maybe the damage will mercifully kill you before your deck runs out. Of course, you can always play lots of cards instead of keeping them in your hand. Yes, put them on the table where I can easily destroy them!
I lost to deck depletion in the only tournament I ever played in. I had Feldon's cane, so I was almost able to just disintegrate him to death. Here was how he did it.
Howling Mine - Everyone draws more cards. Millstone - Discard cards from the top of your deck every turn. Island Sanctuary - he only draws one card while you draw two, and creatures are worthless for attacking unless they are flying or islandwalk. Disenchant - Oh, I see you found a clever card that might ruin things for me. Wrath of God - Oh, I see you got some flying/islandwalk creatures. I don't have any creatures. Nevinyrral's Disk - Oh, I see you've got a lot of cards now that might be dangerous, let's reset. Black Vise - You are drawing so many cards in your hand that you are having trouble playing them all. Maybe the damage will mercifully kill you before your deck runs out. Of course, you can always play lots of cards instead of keeping them in your hand. Yes, put them on the table where I can easily destroy them!
OK, so imagine that deck, and then imagine a deck 10 times more sadistic than that. That was my friend's decks. I wish I could remember their specific construction so that I could back this up, but it was like 17 years ago.
I remember one that used Icy Manipulators and Winter's Orb to make sure that you never even got to take a turn. He'd sit down against 3 other players, get his combo out in 2 or 3 turns, and then he'd take ALL THE TURNS for the rest of the very short game.
The last time I played Magic, the friend I was playing with managed to play an Isochron Scepter with Boomerang on his second turn, when I only had one land out. I basically decided to give up on the spot.
The last time I played Magic, the friend I was playing with managed to play an Isochron Scepter with Boomerang on his second turn, when I only had one land out. I basically decided to give up on the spot.
Comments
However, a program like Cockatrice (or Magic Workstation, which is the one I'm using) is are free and completely anonymous, and thus John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is in full effect. There is simply no barrier to entry, and no ramifications.
One of the largest reasons why I quit playing Magic was the cheaters. I qualified for a few Pro Tours that I couldn't attend due to financial constraints so if I ever made it to an event like that and saw THAT, I'd be livid. I need to find a sponsor to pay for my cards so I can come back and make some cash...
Drawing 3 cards for Brainstorm and not putting 2 back?
Drawing 4 cards for Brainstorm IMMEDIATELY after getting a warning for the above?
Drawing 8 cards to open a game?
Playing 2 lands for one explore and then lying bold-faced when confronted?
Cheating, all.
Maybe some of the confusion for Neito comes from Neito thinking of the similarly named card Exploration, an enchantment which lets a player play an additional land during each turn it is in player. In fact, the name Explore is an homage to the card Exploration. Having two Explorations on the table would allow a player to play three lands per turn.
I suppose my beef is with the article writer, though. Dromaro explained it fine; it just doesn't make sense the way the writer explained it. It's not clear that the explore is from a previous turn.
I guess the writer does engage in a bit of too much slang.
I've been out of the game for about 7 years but I can assure you that people were not allowed to do that. If what you say is accurate, I'm glad to hear it. I don't understand why (for example) the guy in the explore video didn't stop play on the spot and catch the asshat.
First of, yes, creatures are good now. Magic R&D has taken a step in recent years to make creatures much more competitive and useful, giving them built in card advantage and making them more cost-efficient and such.
Secondly, all new magic cards have black borders now. White borders were only used for Core Sets from Revised to 9th Edition. Starting with 10th Edition, those sets also have the much more popular black borders. Borders also help you distinguish between Alpha and Beta themselves, as the two sets have different corners. There's also gold borders which were used for commemorative sets in which they would print cards which would not be legal in tournament play, and silver borders for the sets Unglued and Unhinged, which contain joke cards which are also not legal for tournament play.
Thirdly, Rym wondered about the watermark symbol on Teysa, Orzhov Scion. This card is from the set Guildpact, which is part of the three set Ravnica block, which is set on a plane entirely covered in city-scape called Ravnica. The story is that Ravnica is ruled by ten guilds, which are each represented by a pair of the five colors of Magic. Each card in the Ravnica block which is associated with a guild because it uses the two colors of the guild gets a watermark with a symbol representing that guild, Teysa being a member of the black-white Orzhov Syndicate. You can read more about the other guilds here, or watch this Panel from PAX in which the Magic creative team discusses the guilds.
The original Ravnica block was released between the Fall of 2005 and the Summer of 2006. However, the block which is being released right now is a return visit to the plane, also featuring the guilds, aptly named "Return to Ravnica". I also recommend this talk by Aaron Forsythe, who is pretty much the head honcho at Wizards of the Coast for Magic the Gathering, in which he explains the context and the direction of how Magic developed in the last 10 years or so. The audio quality is a bit wonky and there is some inside baseball in there, but I think it's a good overview.
I mostly played green creature decks, green/black decks, or blue/white. I was heavy on artifacts.
Back then, most people considered each expansion to be just an expansion to the total set of cards, and outside of strict tournament scenes, everyone built decks from an ever-expanding library across every set that came out. No one followed restrictions on cards beyond the 40 (or 60)-card minimum deck limit, the 4 of any one named card limit, and a small list of single-card restrictions (e.g., Sol Ring, moxes, etc...).
I was good at deck construction, so I tended to win most of the time in casual play. I often played with novelty decks as a form of trash-talk. (Once, a friend of mine ran a buy-in tournament at his house for a large number of people. I entered with a 250 card deck and still made it to the finals. One kid almost cried when this ridiculous monster beat his highly tuned 40-card burn deck.
It was a different time, you understand.
Most players had never heard of poison, or didn't realize how many cards allowed one to apply it to an opponent. Marsh Vipers plus some forest walk and a forest hag (to turn an opponent's land into a forest) was particularly nice.
I never successfully made a deck depletion deck that was effective, but I ran that same 250-card monster against someone who tried to do it. Guess who's deck depleted.
Guys like him are the reason I prefer Magic on XBL. I still play from time to time there, although since the latest one came out, not so much. Not that there's anything wrong with it, I think I'm just bored.
I had a lot of fun with Fallen Empires. I bought a box. I had a thrull deck and a thallid deck that I liked a great deal. Later on I built a griffin deck using the same "toss 'em all in" building philosophy you described, not caring about expansions or limitations, and had a little fun with that but once they started expanding the core rules in ways that allowed players to win every game by buying more cards, I was done.
Howling Mine - Everyone draws more cards.
Millstone - Discard cards from the top of your deck every turn.
Island Sanctuary - he only draws one card while you draw two, and creatures are worthless for attacking unless they are flying or islandwalk.
Disenchant - Oh, I see you found a clever card that might ruin things for me.
Wrath of God - Oh, I see you got some flying/islandwalk creatures. I don't have any creatures.
Nevinyrral's Disk - Oh, I see you've got a lot of cards now that might be dangerous, let's reset.
Black Vise - You are drawing so many cards in your hand that you are having trouble playing them all. Maybe the damage will mercifully kill you before your deck runs out. Of course, you can always play lots of cards instead of keeping them in your hand. Yes, put them on the table where I can easily destroy them!
http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=129494
http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=46741
Pretty evil!