MDV Visitor Comments:
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MDV Featured Article - Visitor Comments of 2005. - by Streetz - posted 12/1/05 - discuss here

9/4/05 John Streetz writes: You sent it to the right place (magicdeckvortex(@)hotmail(dot)com). Good job. And about Nero's Bloody Vengeance, yes I knew that too. Don't forget that I scour the net several times each month for new sites, interesting updated sites and portals (to see if they link to the material on Magic Deck Vortex). Portals, for your information, are sites that link to material on other sites on a daily basis. Nero's Bloody Vengeance is just that, a Magic Portal.

I'll be honest, I get aggravated with the majority of the portals (or sites like Nero's Bloody Vengeance). Other portals include www.maroox.com, www.magicthegatheringcards.net, www.mtgtoday.com, and www.blackborder.com. I get aggravated because while MDV doesn't have new content EVERY DAY, I do have new content including combos, deck database additions and articles that are posted several times a week.. the majority of these portals don't ever link back to Magic Deck Vortex. Perhaps their little content spiders get bored of coming to MDV to only see new material 3 times a week, or maybe they don't check out MDV at all anymore. Either way, I get upset when MDV, a casual site, is not represented in their conglomeration of net articles.

Take Maroox, for instance. I thought I had a great relationship with them in the beginning of their existence. They would link to almost every feature, article and blurb I put up on MDV. Plus, MDV's deck building contests inspired their own. However, as time progressed, they stopped linking to MDV articles and features. Why? Because the person in charge of linking to all of the site material changed and apparently they didn't like MDV or whatever. Who knows? I urged them to keep linking to MDV on many occassions and even offered them a spot in my quick links section on the front page. Still nothing. That's when I said to myself, screw it. I don't need their traffic. I would like to think MDV would have enough dedicated viewers who spread the word of MDV by mouth that I don't need a Portal to help out MDV and let people know about MDV.

In the end, yes, I knew Nero's Portal included links to MDV articles, decks and combos. Do they link to everything on MDV that should be linked? No. That's why I don't visit the site often anymore. All these portals care about are sites like www.magicthegathering.com, www.starcitygames.com and www.londes.com and rarely do they actually branch out to lesser sites like www.magicdeckvortex.com and other casual sites out there. Perhaps this will change, but I sincerely doubt it.

And, for the record, Nero's Portal is one of the better ones.  This was not a rant about Nero's website but more all of the portals for MTG on the net.  And there are more than I referenced above.

[/end rant]

Thanks for your comments. ~Streetz~

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9/4/05 John Streetz writes: While this email was received A LONG TIME AGO, I just wanted to say how cool it is to know high profile MTG players (and affiliates with Wizards) like Nate are visiting Magic Deck Vortex.  One of MDV's goals (originally) was to get www.magicthegathering.com to link to MDV in their content somewhere.  While I know that will never happen because of the spoilers I post and the fictional card set I have, I still would love to see the link.

Also, with regard to errors on the site, I HIGHLY encourage you to email me if you see any type of error on ANY page.  Remember that I alone run this site.  Yes, I do have writers and from time to time, but I make all of the changes, post all of the articles, make all of the images for MDV, and so on.  That's a lot of work for someone that works two jobs and still enjoys an active social life.

And, Nate, thank you for compliment and for making me aware of an error!  It was fixed accordingly shortly after I received your email.  ~Streetz~

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9/4/05 John Streetz writes: Thank you!  And, welcome back to the world of Magic: the Gathering.  With regard to the primers, I have posted them again.  I posted a blurb last week about it (found on the main DDB page).  All of the primers and the deck descriptions are in dire need of being updated and if you or anyone has time and the effort to help MDV with this, please let me know.  Thanks for your comments.  ~Streetz~

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9/4/05 John Streetz writes: Simply put, Yes.  For the most part, all creature races and classes that have more than five in their group have been posted.  Even Leeches have a page!  Anyway, Ravnica will boost up a few creature types such as Dragons, Elephants, Shapeshifters, Plants, Wizards, Trolls, Insects, Viashino, Dryads and Vedalken (to name a few).  There may even be a few new ones.  Once I know what creatures will be in the set I will post a few new Creature Spoilers and keep them updated as more come along.  I am rather excited that there are a few Sphinx, Shapeshifters, Plants and Dryads in this set as I am always happy to add more to those lists (or create a new one like Sphinx) and even more... create a TRIBAL deck based around them!  Thanks for writing in, Yoni.  And P.S. - I always take my time.. I only rush around during rumor season.  ~Streetz~

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9/4/05 John Streetz writes: Perhaps this is something I might do in the not so distant future, but in the meantime, I can only refer you.  The Gatherer utility on www.magicthegathering.com is a wonderful utility (most likely one of the best card search utilities on the net) which can help you out.  It can be found here.  Note: You can sort your search results by card name, color, mana cost, card type, power, toughness and rarity.

If you want a checklist for Ninth Edition CORE Set, go here.

If you want to see what set each card is from for Ninth Edition, click here.  Note that, in this link, all of the printings of the card are listed in the right most column called 'printings'. 

Hopefully this has helped you and any other visitor with a similar question.  Best of luck to you and thanks for writing to MDV!  ~Streetz~

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9/4/05 John Streetz writes: Thanks for the comments, Elliot.  The reason: I didn't make the deck.  Chris Romeo, over on www.starcitygames.com, did.  As a reminder, many, many of the decks on Magic Deck Vortex where taken from other sites like Star City, MTG.com, londes.com, Casual Players, Boldo's Armory and so on.  The majority of the time I do not modify their decks.  This is why you see the problems with the card choices you mentioned above.  Why did Chris choose Craw Wurm over Yavimaya Wurm?  That I don't know.  Perhaps it was a format concern.  I don't believe Yavimaya Wurm was reprinted recently.  Whatever the reason, know that MDV's deck pages are not meant to be copied and played.  Instead, I encourage you to make the deck your own and replace the cards you want with other ones.  This concept should be applied to every deck on the site.  ~Streetz~

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3/12/05 John Streetz writes: 
For your use, I have pulled that inquest from my collection and added the description of the deck including the paragraph about how to sideboard.  Most of the time, when I post a deck from Inquest, I don't post the detail about it.  Sometimes this is because I am lazy, while other times it's because the description is geared towards a 10 year old and doesn't offer any good information for the deck except a bunch of tongue and cheek jokes about it.  Anyway, please enjoy.  If you click on the link you will find all of the information about this deck.

On a side note, I am looking for someone to go through the deck database in their spare time and add descriptions for decks and/or make notes about outdated or redundant decks.  My spare time just doesn't allow me to do this as much as I would like to.  Thanks!  ~John Streetz~

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3/12/05 John Streetz writes: 
Amen, brother... to the magic, the pizza and most certainly the beer. It's good to know I am not alone in the world. 

Seriously though, I wasn't trying to insinuate that if you stay on top of the tournament scene that you are a nerd.  I just wanted to make a point that I think it is terrible that good sites have to go premium to stay afloat (or to put more money in their pockets).  The only good thing to come out of Star City's changeover to PREMIUM is that Abe Sargent has been posting lots of crazy, wacky, cool casual decks.  And you don't need to have a premium membership to view them.  In fact, I found a great quote from Abe in one of his articles on Star City Games:

I remember once playing a multi-player game and I pulled out a deck that had four maindeck Antiquities Energy Fluxes, and no artifacts. I absolutely crushed the table, many of whom were relying on artifacts to fix mana, draw cards, as creatures, and so forth. The following week when we played, three of us were packing a full set of Energy Fluxes.

And that is why I play Magic. In order that I might play a card and have players closely scrutinize it - and then after reading it, ask,"Where can I get some of those?"

Now that's a great quote (for me at least). That's a concept I live by.  Thanks, Clem, for your comments!  ~John Streetz~

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3/12/05 John Streetz writes: 
I have gone over this in the past but let me re-iterate it.  Frontpage, the program I use to put the website together, has a built in search function.  However, I cannot get it to work because the host I use does not have the latest server extensions to run the search and it is a UNIX based server.  With these two things in mind, it is very difficult to have an in-site search module. 

If anyone has any suggestions or expertise in FrontPage and UNIX based servers, please let me know.  I would love to resolve this once and for all (for myself and you all of you).  I put this site together, but I most certainly cannot remember every deck name, deck content, combo and feature I have done in the past almost three years.

As for a temporary fix to the situation, you can always go the GOOGLE.  If you want to search only Magic Deck Vortex for a deck using, say, Goblin Game, type in:

"Goblin Game" www.magicdeckvortex.com

It will list all of the pages on MDV (or most of them) with that card referenced on it.  For example, the above search I used as an example brings you one result: Coin Chaos.

Nifty if you ask me.  It works for my use.  Thanks for visiting MDV!  ~John Streetz~

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3/12/05 John Streetz writes: 
It takes me about an hour to post a visual spoiler for a past set and that's assuming I already have most of the cards in my database of card images.  I will add to my 'list of things to do' to post those two spoilers for you.  In the meantime, I want to add spoilers for the portal cards first since they will be legal in the Eternal formats later this year and people will be hot to see them.  Until then.. you can always go here to find those spoilers.  They will not be as visual as mine, but they should fulfill your needs to check your collection against a list.  Thanks for your comments.  ~John Streetz~

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3/12/05 John Streetz writes: 
Thanks for the keen eye.  I have since corrected the list.  As for your comments on essential magic.. I do not prefer to use essential magic at all.  I am not a big fan of sites that don't provide a links section.  Sure, they have a forum, a deck search and other modules for you to use and they might be a great tool online for Magic players.  However, I would never use their services because they won't link exchange with Magic Deck Vortex.  If you want a list of other sites that provide the same searching you can go to the gatherer, MtgFanatic.com, cool stuff inc, and etc... ~John Streetz~

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