News & Notes 7/26/12: M13 Event Decks and… Ads?
In case you missed it, the Magic 2013 Event Decks had their contents spoiled on the mothership this week. There’s been plenty of chatter about them, so if you haven’t already head on over and take a look! They’re coming up right around the corner and will release on 03 AUG.
A quick note as well about the advertising you may have noticed appearing on the site…WordPress has launched a “WordAds” program designed to pay sites for hosting ads, and we’ve signed on. In general, I’m not a huge fan of ads, but personally don’t mind them so long as they are unobtrusive and don’t break up the flow or appearance of a site. What we’re doing now is a bit of a test. If we feel that the ads detract from the reader experience too much, we certainly have the option to suspend them.
That said, as most any player knows Magic is not the cheapest of hobbies. For us, that means buying every single precon in any given year, while toiling to complete the inventory of all past decks. That doesn’t take into account sleeving them, deck boxes, etc. If we can help defray costs while continuing to provide the same level of enjoyment, why not take advantage?
Towards that end, we’ll be particularly interested in hearing what you think. Feel free to leave a comment about them, and we’ll also be running a poll to get feedback. Let us know!
UPDATE: Looks like the ads appear primarily in two places. First, at the end of a post. Second, below the scrolling marquee image at the top of the site, underneath the art for the most recent post.
Ertai's Lament 
Do what you gotta. I’ll sift through some ads if it means you get to keep doing what you’re doing for the MTG community. 🙂
I have no problem with there being ads in general, but I’ve been having a major issue with the site – whenever I go to the main page, the page blanks and just shows a video ad, with no way to get out of it. It works like normal on any page other than the home page.
That’s very concerning. I’ve tried replicating that on two different computers to no avail. What browser are you running?
I have replicated this on Firefox 3.6.11, with Windows XP Professional.
I don’t like the ads separating the main article and the comments. It’s more intrusive than just having sidebar ads.
Firefox 9.0.1. The main page seems to work fine with IE 8.0.6, so worst case scenario I’ll just use that.
Both of you can probably run 14.0.1 with ease. The requirements are quite low. All you need is a Pentium 4 and 512 mb of ram. Windowx XP and up or Mac OSX 10.5 and up. (Says the guy who recently worked on a computer that couldn’t even run Firefox but only Mozillas) Between performance, privacy, and security upgrades, it’s well worth it. Plus Firefox 3 is likely to have more and more issues as new versions of flash and more widespread use of html 5 come to be.
Figured I’d point that out. If it’s a parent thing, may want to mention to them they might want to upgrade.
Try clearing your cache. On 14, it’s under tools “clear recent history.” I think that might fit it for you Doma. Should be able to uncheck everything save cache and not lost your history and all.
the ads are okay and if they cover the costs i don’t mind them.
the new event decks however look pretty poor overall the flashback deck lacking ways to mill itself is a problem
I think the Flashback deck is using Burning Vengeance as a plan B. With graveyard hate gaining popularity, I think it’s a good way to build a BV deck so that you don’t get completely blown out by one card.
maybe but the sideboard 4 bloodcrazed neophates seems wasted to me compared to deranged assistant for example
That deck has 4 copies each of Faithless Looting and Desperate Ravings, along with 3 Forbidden Alchemies. That is plenty of graveyard-enabling cards. A friend of mine built a very similar deck when Innistrad and Dark Ascension first came out, and trust me, getting flashback cards into the graveyard was *not* a problem for him. The spells already in the deck basically mill you already – Faithless Looting + Flashback takes 4 takes out of your deck and dumps 4 in the graveyard, for instance, and Forbidden Alchemy dumps 3 cards into the graveyard and then another 3 when you flash it back. However, they also let you keep cards that you *don’t* want to mill, like lands (these decks can be extremely mana-hungry) and copies of Burning Vengeance (without which the deck doesn’t do much).
You *could* add Dream Twists or something similar to the deck, and in a vacuum dumping another six cards or so into the graveyard is a pretty useful effect in this deck. But what would you cut for them? As noted, the existing card draw/selection package performs a similar function of putting cards in the graveyard, but also does other important things at the same time. Cut into it, and the deck may become more potentially powerful (you mill more cards, so you could theoretically hit a ton of flashback spells with your Dream Twists and just naturally draw everything else you want, and be in a really strong position), but you’ll have less ability to sculpt your hand, so it will be less consistent.
Alternatively, you could cut some of the burn spells or creatures in the deck. That has a different problem, though – cut those, and you’re cutting down on the number of cards in the deck that actually affect the board. Chaining a string of Alchemies, Ravings, Lootings, Dream Twists etc one into the next is fun if you like card advantage (it’s certainly the sort of thing I enjoy doing), but unless you have a Burning Vengeance in play, it doesn’t actually do anything. Having a deck that leans so heavily on a single card is basically conceding the games where you don’t draw it (or where it gets removed), which is going to be a reasonable number.
I don’t think Deranged Assistant is a very good option either. It provides mana acceleration, but it requires you to stick a one-toughness creature in a deck that has very few other targets for your opponent’s removal (and nearly all of those targets have 4 toughness, so they have basically nowhere else to point their Gut Shots, Pillars of Flame, etc). It does mill you as well, but doing it for one card a turn is just very slow compared to what the other spells in the deck already do, even if it lives for more than a turn or two.
Having said that, I do think the deck could stand some improvement. It has a lot of flashback draw spells, but comparatively few flashback burn spells, so it still suffers from the problem of potentially not doing anything without a Burning Vengeance on the board. It has creatures to pick up the slack, but with so few of them in the deck, I suspect they’re often just going to be lightning rods for whatever removal your opponent has. I think a much better plan would be to have more flashback burn spells in the maindeck (probably some combination of more Geistflames, Fires of Undeath, and one or two copies of Devil’s Play), and keep the Fettergeists in the sideboard to bring in once your opponents board out most of their removal.
I agree. The deck really doesn’t do anything except stall the board without Burning Vengeance, and scary still, there’s not a way to tutor something up in the deck. I personally think that Geistflame is not very good. There’s already 3 Pillars of Flame, and those take care of 1-2 toughness creatures, even those with undying. The deck could definitely have improved with a few copies of Devil’s Play, and probably some Runic Repetitions in the sideboard, which was not stellar. Crappy creatures could have been replaced by Delver of Secrets (don’t hate) and maybe a Snapcaster Mage or two. And Infernal Plunge ramps, so that’s good.
The other deck is just fancy Beaters.
My only gripe is it’s in a bad spot right now on the main page. It’s there and a second later the tiles rotate and it’s gone.
If you can manually code it in, it might be amusing to use like Nostalgia Critic uses it sometimes like a “commercial break” or interruption. Doing that, don’t really need it on the main page. Might even be able to work it into the text of articles like a picture and just write around it.