Magic Deck Vortex: Words from the Streetz: Theme Weeks, Lorwyn & the secret Writer’s Guild!

Lorwyn Week is now over on Magic Deck Vortex, the banner has been changed back to something older and yet familiar and the “Welcome to Lorwyn Week” button is gone from the main page and the side navigation bars. We had tons of content last week and if you missed any of it, I’ll provide you with a link to see what you might have missed in just a moment.

In the meantime, I want to know what everyone thought of the week. You can discuss your thoughts about MDV’s latest theme week here. Once we get that out of the way, I’m going to go over a few things including the current Writers Guild staff, past Theme Weeks and some quick directional notes about the articles you will be seeing. Oh, and some of your user submitted comments and questions! It's been a while since I did that.

Did you enjoy the content? Was there enough content? Was there too much? Did we cover all of the bases? What was your favorite aspect of the week and likewise, your least favorite? Was there something from a previous theme week that you missed in this week?

If you can provide input on these things, we can improve on the next theme week we do. And know we would like to do more than two theme weeks a year in the future. Especially since we have a better sense of organization in the MDV Writers Guild. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

As mentioned in the Intro & Schedule for Lorwyn Week, we had so much content that we had to split things up into two weeks. All of the First Impressions articles were posted the week before the official theme week started so that we didn’t flood the front page with so many new things that people didn’t read them all. I considered it kind of like a warm-up to all of the content that was posted during the actually week. Did you like that? Or would you rather see it all combined into the same week (even though some people may not check out all of the new and exciting content?)

We had a new combo page, a contest (the deadline is 11/3), six new articles (not counting the First Impressions), an art catacomb update, creature visual spoiler updates and a new deck of the day (each day) that made sense in the week.

Some things we didn’t do this week include a tournament, a top 10’s list, a deckbuilding contest and a deck database update. We tried the Tournament thing during Avatar week and that didn’t work out so well. I figured I wouldn’t tread that path again until I got feedback from more people saying they wanted to see a tournament. Unfortunately, I’ve only received about two or three requests for tournaments since then and that doesn’t make for a very good tournament. As far as the other things you didn’t see in the theme week are concerned, don’t be surprised if you see them in the coming weeks. Some of those features are extremely time consuming and didn't make it in time for the week.

In previous weeks, there was new content posted on Saturday and Sunday. This week, however, we didn't post anything over the weekend. Did you miss it? Would you prefer new content for a theme week not be posted on the weekend? Honestly, I would have posted some content this past weekend except I was out of town (U of I party - woohoo).

So again I ask you, what did you think of Lorwyn Week? Please let us know your opinion in the forum or send me an email. If you are wondering why it is important to offer your feedback to MDV for this, I would encourage you to check out this article.

Yes. In fact, Lorwyn Week is the fourth theme week we’ve had on MDV. Below are links to each theme week that include the intro and the schedule of events for that week:

THEME WEEK #2 – Avatars! (9/11/6)

(Click on the banner to follow the link)

THEME WEEK #4 – Lorwyn Week! (10/22/7)

(Click on the banner to follow the link)

So there you have it. As I mentioned earlier, I would like to have more than two theme weeks a year. Perhaps even one every two or three months. The unfortunate part of doing more theme weeks for me is the sheer work involved in doing each theme week. It takes me a lot of time to post the articles, post discussion threads, make banners, graphics, and do cross links for the site. However, I think it is worth it.

Interesting note about Lorwyn Week: It just so happens that www.magicthegathering.com had their own theme week at the same time MDV's Theme Week was in progress... except it was Planewalker Week over there. I assure you this wasn't planned.

As some of the other Writers have talked about in the past, we are working on improving articles here on Magic Deck Vortex.

Tynion (Chris Newton) has stepped up as the lead writer, and is doing a great job of coordinating the writers and editors in a schedule that works for everyone. Mind you, an aggressive schedule. Anyway, he is a major propellant in making things happen behind the scenes.

As for myself, I am also a lead writer, but more importantly I am the owner and publisher of the site. This has never changed and most likely never will. Unless I sell the site or something… Anyway, I will continue to post articles, make final edits and publish all of the articles.

We now have several editors for the Writers Guild including: Maleficent, Michael Zeora, Amadeus, Death By Aggro and Aneximines. While the editors will rotate out every few months, these are our current editors and they are working their butts off making sure the articles are in tip-top shape for your review. Recently added to the list is Aneximines. He is our new Rules Editor and he will apply his super-accurate rules knowledge to all of our articles so people like me don’t post bombos in articles.

Our new Contest Administrator is Cashew. He has a love for contests and has stepped up to coordinate new contests and make sure there is follow through. (Follow Through was a problem in the past - but no more). Just recently he arranged the Planeswalker contest. You can find out more information on that contest here.

Note that all of the people referenced above are also writers. The Writers I haven’t mentioned include Luthervamplord, Einsteinmonkey, Death_By_Beebles and Tekkactus. We have several other members in the Writers Guild but they are currently inactive or retired, so I won’t mention those people at this time.

So there you have it. The secret Writers guild of Magic Deck Vortex isn’t so much a secret any more. If you are interested in writing for Magic Deck Vortex, you can post something in this thread. After you post something there, either Tynion, Death_By_Beebles or myself will contact you and let you know what to do next to apply for a position in the Guild.

Typically we ask for a sample of your writing and then if okay, you will write several articles. Once several of them are published, you will become an official member of the guild.

I am very excited about our current team of writers and editors and I hope you too will be looking forward to new articles on Magic Deck Vortex. If you ever have any comments about the general writings on MDV or individual writers, concept, etc. – please send me an email. I love to hear from you guys and gals whether it is via email or in a forum thread. Again, if you want to know why it is important to give your feedback, check out this article by Luthervamplord.

I get emails every once in while from the visitors of Magic Deck Vortex. I try to reply to them as often as possible, but every once in a while I neglect sending a response. Whether or not I send a reply, know that I read each one and consider it (or fix something because of it).

Hellkite wrote on 10/2/07:

Dear MDV!

I got your mail and give you a tipp to improve it. You could tell more about prizes of each card and tell more about the creature types and elder cards like: P-9, World Champion 1996, Shichifukujin Dragon and some new ones like Black Lotus in DCI. Some of my friends would like to hear about dragons because they collect them (also foils!!).

I would like to think about this answer and take some of these points.

A month ago I sent out an email to all of the forum members asking them to give feedback on MDV content. Hellkite sent me this email in response to that email. First off, thank you for your reply, Hellkite!

This is something I would like to do, although on this note, there are several things I would like to do. I would like to post a visual spoiler for every DCI Awards Card, every unique card that wasn’t in a set, and other oddities and rarities of Magic.

I know I can get most of these unique cards and compilations of information from The Magic Library. However, time is always an issue. I still have several old set visual spoilers to post (like Legends and some of the Core Sets from the earlier days of Magic). Which should I give priority to? Right now my major focuses include the articles, deck database and combos portions of the site.

Know that I will post these visual spoilers sometime in the future, I’m just not sure when.

Warren Zdan wrote on 7/23/07:

I just recently got back into magic, and your site has been invaluable in helping me try to catch back up. One of the features I like the most is your list of infinite combo pieces.

Magic Deck Vortex: Infinite Gears - Combo Pieces

It's a lot easier to use than gatherer, where you have to try and come up with exact phrases, then sort through all the crap that doesn't work whenever you try to find a card with a particular mechanic. I haven't been able to find anything else similar, either. However, I noticed it hasn't been updated since CoK/Bok, and was wondering if/when you were going to update it. It would also be a lot more helpful to add more categories, such as untappers (staff of domination, freed from the real, Pemmin's aura, etc.), cards that can be tapped for lots of mana, enduring renewal/Shirei type cards, and lots of others. Mostly just parts of different engines that appear elsewhere on your combos page, but it does help to see them all together, so you can choose what fits your need the most. I'd offer to try and help if you do get around to it, but my knowledge of everything between mirage and present is pretty poor, and I've about had it with gatherer. Either way, thanks for the great resource, and keep up the site.

Warren, thank you for your comment. If you recall, several months ago I did update the Mechanic Feature: Combo Pieces page. And the reason I updated it? It was because of your email.

There are LOTS of pages here on Magic Deck Vortex. I would say there are over 3000 pages here on the site. And with that known, it is difficult for me to update them all as often as I would like to. For instance, I still need to update the Land Visual Spoiler. However, sometimes all it takes is an email like this to get me to update certain pages.

So remember that your emails and comments are important. If you see an error on a page, an old page you would like to see updated, or anything else... send me an email!

Dan L. wrote on 1/26/07:

hello,
as i was browsing around your new deck portion of your site, i noticed something interesting about some of the tribal decks; and that is that some of them are extended legal and not type 2 legal. the current ruling on tribal decks is that they must be type 2 legal. just thought id let you know.

Dan, thank you for your comment. With exception to the Eternal Deck Page, all of the decks in the MDV database are not tournament oriented. In other words, I post decks without a care about whether the deck is legal in a certain format. Most of the tribal decks may or may not be legal in a Tribal tournament on Magic Online. Tribal decks to me are a collection of creatures that share of type that make the deck themed. I.E. an Elf deck or a Wizard deck. That is tribal. Whether it is legal in an eternal format, extended or Standard matters not to me. After all, MDV is a casual site.

As mentioned above, the decks you submit do not have to be legal in any tournament format. As long as they aren’t crazy stupid with four copies of all Moxen and a few other cards, I will consider them.

You can submit decks to me via email although the preferred method of submitting a deck is through the forum in the Deck Forums. I would strongly encourage you to check out the READ ME and DBM Informational threads in those forums. It will give you insight on how to get a deck you’ve submitted into the MDV Deck Database.

Wow – this is an old one. I’m posting it now because I wanted to touch on the topic. To reply to your comment, abaljeu: Yes, I can! However, I don’t all the time. What I do provide is a thumbnail image of certain key cards in the deck.

Since I post all of the decks manually in frontpage, you can imagine how time consuming it would be to link to every card in every deck of the MDV Database. Hopefully the thumbnails at the bottom of every deck page will give you a good understanding of what the deck uses to tick. You can even click on the thumbnails to see the full card image.

Thanks for the comment, Justin. This comment was received before we posted the First Impression's articles for Lorwyn a week after the set was released. I think we are improving on the timing aspect of this series.

Well, that concludes this session of Questions, Comments and my Replies. If you ever have any comments you want to email me about, send them to streetz@magicdeckvortex.com.

Thank you for visiting Magic Deck Vortex and providing your feedback to the site. It is greatly appreciated and terribly important to ensure that we are improving things here and giving you everything you expect out of the site.

Now I ask that you go off and post something in the forum about Lorwyn Week and/or content in this article or send me an email about the same.

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.
Find other articles by this author here.
Find other articles from this series here.