Whats your MTG online drug of choice?

[Avangel]

I was reading the horror stories from the Appr/MWS thread.  I just downloaded the MWS application but is it worth playing?   If not what do you suggest?

Sidenote: If so does anymone have links to the MWS pics on a different server?  The .zips don't download from the official pics site.

[Malhavoc]

Sidenote: If so does anymone have links to the MWS pics on a different server?  The .zips don't download from the official pics site.

www.mwsdata.com is not really down, it just has a download policy which prevents more than a single person from downloading files at the same time. This is a big limitation, but the site administrator was forced into it due to the outstanding amount of bandwith required.. so, in the end, just try later... otherwise, you can download some pics even from this other site:

http://www.bersogeddon.com/Risorse/cardimg.html

I was reading the horror stories from the Appr/MWS thread.  I just downloaded the MWS application but is it worth playing?   If not what do you suggest?

I suggest you to avoid mwsplay.net (the default server you can play on) this one is really full with any sort of scrubs. You can find some good players, but they are exceptions. The best thing you can do is finding opponents on magic chats, maybe even on TMD IRC channel. Otherwise another good option is joining some online leagues, such as www.o-gaming.com or www.magic-league.com Here you can find good and bad players, like everywhere else, but at least you will survive the total mindless abomination which is mwsplay.net. Those sites even hold regular tournaments, which could be quite amusing too.

Anyway, if you end up finding good players, you can just stay in contact with them and arrange games even outside chats. MWS does not require a server to arrange games: you can just connect to your opponent directly if he has set his play module to the "waiting" status.

[Avangel]

Thanks Malhavoc.  I'll try DLing the files again later and follow your suggestions.

Just a quick MWS question while I'm at it.  Does it not enforce MTG rules?  I've played MTGO but reading through the horror story thread I get the impression people can do just about anything with MWS.

[Nazdakka]

MWS is an excellent bit of software. The origin of most of those horror stories comes from logging on to MWSplay.net, starting a game and waiting for someone to join... you get a lot of idiots that way, but it's possible to find a good opponent with persistance. There are some alternate servers, like MWSgames.net, but nobody uses them. Perhaps it might be worth using that as a TMDer/other reasonable people server?

A good way of finding decent opponents is to join one of the leagues - there are several around, mostly based on IRC. Links:

http://www.o-gaming.com (The one I play on, US based but with a good proportion of Europeans)
http://www.magic-league.com (European based, some Americans. I believe they have Julien Nuijten, the current World Champion as an occaisional user)
http://www.e-league.com (Possibly defunct)

All of these run regular tournaments and offer small IRL prizes for winning major events. The players generally range between awful and pretty good, but the really high quality players tend to drift towards MTGO, and so it's more PTQers than pros at the top of the standings.

PS: Asking whether MWS is better than Apprentice will provoke a long and boring discussion about the relative merits of the two programs, which will go on and on until the thread gets closed. I personally favour MWS, but Apprentice is also a decent piece of software.

Edited in PPS: Neither MWS nor Apprentice have a rules-executing engine. It's like playing IRL - you shift phases by passing and drag cards to play from hand. There are mana counters to keep track on the LHS of the screen, and a phase marker in the middle.

Things to watch out for:

People who use fetchlands by putting the land to hand from their library and then into play - that can obviously be used to cheat because it is possible to get any card from your library and then play a land from hand.

If they use the 'look at top x cards of libary' button to search for something, make them shuffle, as MWS doesn't by default. That way they can choose to kepe their library's current state if they like it, and 'remember' to shuffle if they don't.

[Malhavoc]

Thanks Malhavoc.  I'll try DLing the files again later and follow your suggestions.

Just a quick MWS question while I'm at it.  Does it not enforce MTG rules?  I've played MTGO but reading through the horror story thread I get the impression people can do just about anything with MWS.

As it happens when you play on a wooden, real, talbe, cards do not act on their own   (only exception: cards which come into play tapped really come into play tapped).  This is not a problem at all, believe me! Unless you encounter some stupid jerk, no one will ever try putting into play cards without paying their mana costs.. oh, well, if they do, you'll do like you would do in real life: stand up and go away. But don't worry, it almost never happen, particularly if you do not challenge people on mwsplay.net  

Next MWS versions will enforce rules, but that's gonna happen in a quite distant future (probably one year or even more). Figure that there are even people who do no want enforced rules, they think it's simpler and faster to do everything on their own.  :lol:

P.S.
BTW, soon (a couple of months?) MWS 0.95 will come out, and it's going to support many other CCG games, like legend of the five rings, vs system, star wars, on the edge, lord of the rings, netrunner, pokemon, yu-gi-oh and others. Ah, and not only CCG but also chess, maybe even risiko, and so on... so if you want to take a break with magic, you can beat some yu-gi-oh fan hard and teach him how lame that game is..  

[jro]

If you a) run Windows but prefer command line or keyboard-centric interfaces or b) run Linux or Mac OS X, you can check out GCCG.  Like many apps developed for Unix, it has a quirky interface, but once you get used to it it's very efficient.  Ever since the Spoiler Generator at mtgnews went to hell, I think the text based card search capabilities in gccg are the best thing going.  My biggest gripe is that the maintainers seem entirely unwilling to add or uninterested in adding the book promo cards to the database, which means you can't play with Mana Crypt.

[Hi-Val]

By the way, if you're looking for a game with TMDers, look on #tmdgame on EFnet. It's frowned if you gamebeg in #themanadrain.

[Kasuras]

www.magic-league.com (European based, some Americans. I believe they have Julien Nuijten, the current World Champion as an occaisional user)

And that's where I drop in.

No, not really. I'm usually in a Dutch magic server where the people who started the League (Koen) are regulars too, and JulienN used to be there too. But after a few wins IRL; he didn't come there that often anymore, but we don't see him at all nowadays. It's true that he played a lot there though.

If you hope to meet the real world champion in magic-league.. well, don't try.

By the way, if you're looking for a game with TMDers, look on #tmdgame on EFnet. It's frowned if you gamebeg in #themanadrain.

Does that even still exist? I always thought #themanaleak was for game begging.


Other than that; mwsnet is really not that bad. The vintage players are usually either very bad or quite good; just close the newbie games and you'll have a good time. It's also a great way to see how your deck would do in the first round of a big tournament; you can have good or bad players and you can test versus both of them.

[Jacob Orlove]

Yeah, we switched to #themanaleak for game begging. Also, you can discuss budget and legacy decks there!

[Avangel]

Great info.  Stop in I will (Like Yoda I talk).

If anyone was in the same position as me as far as downloading the card images I found that if I went to the http://files.mwsdata.com/full.html page I could 'Save target As' most of the links and DL like 3 sets at a time no problem.

Just don't go there now.  I'm only on Invasion Block!