Archive for the ‘General’ Category

You might have wondered why it’s been so quiet around here lately. Well, we’ve been quite busy preparing what we believe it’s going to be a huge step forward. We can now officially announce the opening of the new eternal site www.eternal-central.com !!!

With Eternal Central (let’s call it EC to short it a bit) we plan to cover everything important that is going on the worldwide eternal scene. For that, we’ve incorporated 2 more excellent players that will contribute with their articles, reports, analysis, etc… The current EC staff is composed by:

Jason Jaco (JACO) – From my point of view, he’s one of the biggest gurus of Eternal. Not as famous as Menendian, but Jason definitely can write some kick ass articles. He’s also been, probably one of the best “pimpers” ever existed. Even though he sold LOTS of cards (^^¡) he still own some pretty cool stuff.

Benjamin Guillerm (Watanabe) – One of the players that has more influence in the french and European eternal scene. Devoted to Vintage and Legacy, Benjamin and his teammates from the GT-Team (http://www.team-gt.com/site/) are famous for having created the Selkie Fish (aka Noble Fish). Benjamin is a celebrity among the French community and I’m sure his good contacts will be really useful to make EC grow a lot.

Juan Vilar (Troin) – 20 top of the Spanish DCI Total Ranking, pro-player (u are such from the moment you gain 1 pro-point ) expert on Extended (if that exists anymore?) and Legacy, who will surely contribute a lot with his wisdom, reports and articles. On top of that, Juan is a web designer that will help us make EC look professional as well as even more functional.

Jordi Amat (piZZero) – That would be me ^^. Pimp freak and lover of the eternal formats who’s spent years contributing the community with the Team Pataners site. At some point, TP was probably the most successful blog around Europe, and that’s a thing I’m really proud of!

The team isn’t closed and we are totally up for new contributors from any countries. We only have two little requirements: You need to be able to write in English and you need to love the game. If you feel like joining the EC crew, send us a mail at eternal.central@gmail.com

We are super excited with this new release and we’d love hear what you’d love to read in this new website. We’ll also appreciate if you can criticize our new design (I know it’s very similar to TP, but we’ll work to make it lot more functional). Right now our main focuses are directed to covering big eternal events (such as the upcoming MTG Barato), writing good quality analysis and tournament reports.

With all this said, we do hope you enjoy Eternal Central in this new contribution to the eternal community.

Last, but not least, I’d like to say something regarding Team Pataners. With this announcement the TP site will stop its publishing activity. I’ve been writing here for more than 3 years and in 3 different languages (Catalan, Spanish and English) where I’ve experienced many wonderful moments. For those, I’d like to thank everyone that helped contribute and to everyone that came and read us everyday. In the end, the most important thing is to receive the feedback from you, readers. Without you it would be very hard to find the motivation to keep ruling. In some way it’s a sad moment for me, but this step was totally needed if I wanted to grow as a writer for the community. Jason has supported me a lot during these days and I do wanna say thank you to you too! Without him I wouldn’t probably found the forces to keep going and take this decision.

I’m pretty sure www.eternal-central.com will rock some day. Sooner or later, but it will. So, what I can do now is to recommend you visit us everyday so you are updated with the latest news from Eternal.

Cheers and thanks for reading!

Today is one of those days that you feel like a part of yourself has died. Well, it actually didn’t die alone, someone killed it. Yes, today the new Banned and Restricted list was published and Mystical Tutor has been banned in Legacy.

I’ve been playing combo decks that included Mystical Tutor for, at least, 5 years. Without Mystical Tutor the DCI just killed two archetypes in a shot: ANT and Reanimator. I haven’t read the explanations on why they banned Mystical Tutor (honestly I don’t care as I lost all my respect for the DCI long time ago) but I can assume the GP Madrid final has something to do with it.

The official June 18th 2010 Banned & Restricted List announcement reads as it follows:

With this announcement, I can say “bye bye” to my most fetish deck of all times:

So now, with the exception of Belcher, combo is dead in Legacy. Belcher… enough said. You can expect the new Legacy to be a totally aggro format (Zoo, Goyfs, Merfolks, Goblins, etc…), combined with Control and Agro-Control decks.

I don’t even feel like talking about the DCI doing nothing with Vintage. Vintage clearly needs some adjustments, and this was the most awaited list for many players. With Time Vault being über broken/timmy/stupid 2 card combo and MUD being the strongest deck of the format thanks to the über doped Juggernaut called Lodestone Golem, we’ll have to suffer 3 more months without any changes.

Welcome to the Goyf 2.0 era in Legacy!

I know we’ve been slacking a bit lately. There’s different reasons behind this slow posting rhythm and I’d like to explain you why.

First of all, both me and Jason have been pretty busy with stuff from our personal lives. I’ve spent the last 15 days painting my new apartment and reforming all those little things that needed to be fixed. Problem was, that I had to do that after my regular 9h of working at the restaurant. Anyways, this past weekend we (me and my GF) finally did the move of all our things and we are now settled in our new home. I hope I’ll have some more free time and forces at nights to write and recover the pace of the web.

On the other hand, Jason and I have been tinkering with the idea of moving on and make a step forward with the web. Team Pataners was created by a group of friends who loved to play Legacy and Vintage. We used the TP site to post reports, fun stuff, etc… but, nowadays, the that team doesn’t exist and it’s a bit silly to keep using that name.

So, with Jason we agreed on creating a new website, with a more mtg-eternal-related name for it. Even though we will keep the posts from January 2010 until today, as all of those are written in English, we’d love to start from scratch again. And that’s why your help is needed!

What things would you like to read on a eternal related website?

We’d love to read your comments with suggestions. Feel free to say what you like and what you don’t. Be honest and criticize with no mercy if needed. Our only way to improve our future site is by knowing your opinion.

Also, we’d love to have more people participating on the future website. The more people we are, the more dynamic the website will be. I had this cool idea of having at least one writer from each country with some eternal tradition (Spain, Germany, Italy, France, USA, etc…). But hey! If you are from a small country and you’d like to contribute, feel free to contact us too! This way, with people from different countries, it would lot easier to track everything that is going on at the eternal scene around the world. Let me explain myself better. If we have a team of 5 writers and each of them covers the information from their tournaments, reports, etc… at their country, don’t you agree it would be incredibly useful for the community?

We don’t require anything at all to apply for this writer positions. All you need is good will, have some knowledge of Vintage and Legacy and what’s happening on your country community, and to be able to write in English. We can’t offer any money to pay you back for your time, but in the future, if the new website works as intended, your work will be rewarded! Keep in mind that the Team Pataners website has had already some publicity agreements with stores and we got paid for allowing them placing publicity in the past. If we make this new website grow, I’m sure we can work the monetary part quite nicely.

We seek people willing to help with anything as long as they have passion for doing it. If you are an expert (or not so expert) on some deck and you’d like to have a weekly/monthly column to write about that deck, evolution of it, etc…, feel free to join as well. If you are a passionate about collecting cards and you’d like to write about that, or just post what other people have to share, feel free to ask as well. The more, the better!

Remember, this is a brand new project Jason Jaco and me (Jordi Amat) are willing to start. We’d love to see it grow in a way that benefits the whole community. If you think you can help, leave us a comment or use the contact us page .

Thanks for reading and for your time!

We’ve been working for a while already to make this moment possible and, finally, we are proud to announce that our online store is up and running. Let me explain you few things you should know and consider about our store.

• We aren’t professional dealers, but we know the business and what’s important for the customer. Therefor, we’ve put all our efforts to make the shopping experience easy and, most important, safe.
• The online store might suffer some redesigns as we’ll be adding more and more products soon. We’ll need to categorize the products for an easier browsing and purchasing.
• We’ll try to keep the stock updated with pimp stuff mostly. We can’t compete with big shops at selling regular staples, but, we can offer some stuff that is very hard to find.
• You can access the shop from the sidebar banner, the top menu tab or the shopping card link.

Many people has asked me (piZZero) if I sell some of my cards from my personal collection. I’ll be using the online store to sell some rare items from time to time. Stay tuned if you want to be the first to notice about these special items.

HAPPY SHOPPING!

Some of our store policies:

(these might be updated and gathered soon on a FAQ page for our store)

Shipping
Team Pataners uses a flat shipping rate of 3€. This rate covers for registered shipping to anywhere in the world. In case of orders superior to 100€, shipping will be free. If customer would like to purchase an insurance for the shipping, please contact us before making the payment.

Shipping times varies between 1 to 4 weeks usually, depending on where you live. Shipments to Italy might take a bit longer.

Team Pataners does not held responsible for any lost shipment. We totally recommend using an insurance if your order is over 100€.

Privacy
Team Pataners is committed to protecting your privacy. We only use the information we collect about you to process orders and to provide support and upgrades for our products. Please read on for more details about our privacy policy.

How does Team Pataners protect customer information?
Since we only accept Paypal payments, customers at the checkout will be redirected to the PayPal web to fill in their personal information. Paypal is the safest way to use your money on the internet, that’s why we use it.

Will Team Pataners disclose the information it collects to outside parties?
Team Pataners does not sell, trade, or rent your personal information to others. Team Pataners  may provide aggregate statistics about our customers, sales, traffic patterns, and related site information to reputable third-party vendors, but these statistics will not include personally identifying information.

Refunds
Team Pataners does not refund money to customers who aren’t satisfied with their purchases. If you have any problems with your order, we encourage you to contact us and explain the situation. Team Pataners will make everything possible to solve any problematic situation.

You might have noticed that lately we haven’t been posting much, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have things to explain! Let me begin with the off-topic:

Personally, I’ve been loaded with work the past couple of weeks (which I can’t complain about) and that’s taken really a lot of time. On top of that, last week I found a new apartment in Barcelona to where I’ll be moving soon. The thing with the apartment also took me a lot of time, you know… visits, meetings to negotiate the contract, etc, etc… If there’s one thing I love about my new apartment are its views!

I guess the moving to the new apartment will also reduce my free time, but I’ll do my best to keep you guys updated. Hope you understand!

And now let’s move back to the mtg related stuff. I hope to be able to announce something in the following days that will benefit the “pimp” community a lot. I can’t give you more information right now, but I can advance you it’s something huge. You’ll just have to be a bit patient!

Also, hopefully this weekend we’ll have a post with a very exclusive sales. A friend of mine is willing to sell a couple of really rare staples (I mean REALLY rare, caps intended) and I’ve offered him to use the blog as his publicity platform. If you are a collector or you like to play with rare stuff, you’d better stay tuned for the following days.

Regarding JACO, he’s disappeared! Hope he’ll be back soon to surprise us with his awesome articles, MOL reports, etc…

Once again, thanks for reading!

We know how much you guys like watching videos. For that, we’ve implemented a couple of video widgets to the sidebards so you can stay updated or re-watch any of the videos we’ve posted here. I’ve also added a widget with the videos from Enric, who’s focused on Legacy only. This way, we’ll have it covered the two eternal formats.

When you click on a video from the sidebar, a little pop-up window will show and bring you the video with its information, tags, adsense (to help us by clicking), etc… Something like this:

I hope you guys like the upgrade and enjoy watching more and more videos!

Remember that you can also subscribe to our youTube video channel if you wanna get notifications as soon as a video is released.

In the past I used to write a monthly post with the review of what happened at the site during the past month. It’s always cool to see the site growing while remembering some of the experiences, reports, news, articles, etc…

It’s been 3 months already since the re-opening of the blog, and I can’t believe how good the blog is doing with just 3 months of life! This is the data provided by Google Analytics from March 2010:

• 14,317 Visits
• 29,096 Pageviews
• 2.03 Pages/Visit

The peeks belong to the release of articles

29K pageviews nearly makes it an average of 1000 pageviews/day, coming from 6999 unique visitors from 67 different countries. The top 3 countries are:

1. Spain
2. United States
3. Germany

Fear the world domination!

29 posts were published during March, making it almost 1 post/day. I believe this is a good pace to keep you guys entertained, but it’s never enough! My personal goal is to reach an average of 2 posts/day. Right now I can’t spend more time, but hopefully this is gonna change soon.

If you feel you could contribute the site somehow, you’d like your articles to be published or simply join the crew to write on a regular basis about eternal (news, reports, top8 decklists, etc…), feel free to contact us.

We started March with my epic report from GP Madrid (Parts I, II & III). That report created a lot of love/hate because it wasn’t simply a tournament report. It was more of a full weekend experience report that included a GP in it. You can find the Top8 decklists from GP Madrid here.

JACO delighted us with a series of articles about the reserved list and the problem of the cardboard’s price.

Thoughts on Breaking the Reserved List

Solutions to the High Price of Cardboard

He also wrote an EXCELLENT deck analysis for Legacy’s Ad Nauseam Doomsday Hybrid, where he shows us why this deck is probably the best deck in the format.

Focus on Legacy – Ad Nauseam Doomsday Hybrid

The guy(s) from ICBM (Ben Carp, aka The Guslinga) decided to play a Retro Vintage Tournament and JACO was there to witness how wonderful Vintage was back in the gush old days!

Of course, Team Pataners wouldn’t be Team Pataners without all its pimp. Few goodies landed in my hands and shared them with you. I believe I’m the only owner with 2 cards co-altered by Terese Nielsen and Ron Spencer. In Madrid I got my hands on this marvelous Yawgmoth’s Will.  I also got a couple more goodies for my decks, coming straight from Japan and signed by Anthony Francisco: Tezzeret & Leviathian Foil Japanese Signed!

We posted some cool alterations from Ron Spencer, first a couple of old Swamp playsets and then a Yawgmoth’s Will that went over the auction site. We also knew that Dan Frazier would visit Spain to sign cards! Great news for myself, who’s gonna be the proud owner of a beta P9 double signed (and altered)!

Tomorrow I’ll post this week’s What’s hot on eBay! So you don’t miss track of your favorite pimp stuff.

March has also been the month when WotC announced MANY things. First that Legacy would come to Magic Online, then March’s 2010 DCI Banned & Restricted list (nothing changed) and finally the most controversial announcement of the past years, The Official Reprint Policy & Revised  Reprint Policy. No matter how much you hate the collectors, here at Team Pataners decided to interview Favian Poh.

The Favian Poh’s Collecting Passion

Seriously, if you enjoy MtG, you can’t miss reading the interview to this passionate collector!

These were just few of the things that happened during March at www.team-pataners.com If you wish, you can browse the rest using the archives.

Anyways, we just wanted to thank you all for reading and for supporting this site!

Cheers!

So, don’t ask me how Evan Erwin, from Star City Games, has managed to get the list, but he’s spoiled all the cards that will come inside the FTV: Relics pack. The complete list is:

• Masticore
• Karn, Silver Golem
• Memory Jar
• Mox Diamond
• Akroma’s Memorial
• Feldon’s Cane
• Ivory Tower
• Ring of Gix
• Ornithopter
• Platinum Angel
• Lightning Greaves
• Oblivion Stone
• Legacy Weapon
• Sol Ring
• Oil of Psarl

All in all, it seems a pretty bad box, except for the Mox Diamond. The rest of the cards they either existed already in foil or they actually unplayable. Sure having Ivory Tower in foil is great… but it will never see play in today’s formats.

The spoiled card from Scars of Mirrodin will be the Oil of Psarl. They haven’t any information regarding its text, so we’ll have to wait a bit longer.

1st of April – 2010 (Better late than never!)

March 19 2010 DCI Banned & Restricted List Announcement

---

So, no changes to any kind of format. I guess my wet dreams of restricting Workshop, Wasteland, Null Rod and bannning Time Vault were just that, a dream.

Lately, the community (specially eternal players) has been worried about reprints due to the crazy increase of the prices of some cards. We’ve seen lots of rumors about the possibility of power 9 or dual lands being reprinted to boost eternal formats. But today, Wizards of the Coast has spoken and clarified their oficial reprint policy and the revised reprint policy.

These are the two links where they explain the new (or not so new) changes:

Oficial Reprint Policy

Revised Reprint Policy

So, the rules are quite clear now!

On the other hand, tomorrow we’ll hope to get a review on the Banned & Restricted lists. Besides of the needed changes to Vintage, I believe that some changes to Legacy might be needed as well. What do you guys think?

Use the comments to discuss whether or not Legacy needs some changes. You know how I feel, right?

Related article on TP:

Thoughts on breaking the reserved list – By JACO

Ladies and gentlemen Legacy is on fire! GP Madrid has beaten any previously attendance record and that’s something Spain is really proud of. Well, we (eternal players) should all be proud of! Every now and then, the attendance records gets beaten but that ain’t new. What’s new and surprising is that GP Madrid was played under the Legacy format. Obviously Wotc never expected GP Madrid to be such a success. Their constant work to improve the game, has forced them to implement Legacy for Magic Online. With that many players playing Legacy on Real Life™ it was an obvious movement to release Legacy for the online fans.

The announcement came published yesterday (9th of March) on their official website.

I’m back home from Madrid. WHAT A WEEKEND! We’ve had one of the greatest mtg parties of all times. Insane amount of people, including the new World Record of attendance in the history of mtg (2220 players); excellent organization, who solved quite well all the problems generated by having 2K+ players; tournaments ran very smooth all weekend; queues for Mark Poole were long but not endless, etc…

I got some really cool PIMP stuff to show you guys, lots of alterations (including another card altered by Terese Nielsen and Ron Spencer together!), some foil japanese and few other stuff.

I will write a more elaborated post tomorrow or the day after. I just wanted to let you know that I survived! Let me finish this post with a Michael Jackson classic!

The new Team Pataners web has been running for a bit more than a month now. In this period of time, we’ve tried to improve several aspects of the web in order to give the reader the best experience we can offer. Still, we feel that’s not enough.

One of the major changes introduced has been the language. We now write in english. Personally, I love doing so, even though I make looooots of mistakes.

The other BIG change is the web design. We’ve worked hard on finding a design that is both functionally and innovative. We started with Team Pataners back in 2007 and we’ve always been ahead of the general style, creating the trend that people followed afterward.

We feel like this new “magazine” style isn’t just a very cool-looking site but also works great for both the writers and the readers. It has and endless amount of stuff we can use to provide you with the best quality posts, news, reports, decks, etc… Give us some more time, and wait until we master the use of all these tools that were given to us.

And how about or cool mobile version of the blog? We’ve done it first, again.

In order to get rid of those f***ing annoying Hostican error messages, we finally migrated our blog and we’ve gain lots of stability.

If I’m happy about something, besides of having returned, it’s about my friend Jason joining the Team Pataners staff. This tandem is gonna rock! We both are very enthusiastic about this project and we believe we can do great things together. Give us some time and credit and you’ll find out by yourself. Right now we are working on the right formula of contents. You know, a bit of articles, some reports, some eternal news and announcements, some pimp stuff, etc… = success? Time will tell.

So, after this little introduction, I’d like you to answer this:

How would you improve the Team Pataners web?

(Your comments are very important to us, so please, spend a little time to explain us how would you improve the site)

Thanks to my friend Josep, aka Broadcast, we’ve finally fixed our problems with our past hosting provider: Hostican. Whose name really described its service… they hosted what they could LOL.

Now we are using IBERONLINE, and according to Josep, we won’t have any more problems.

This migration was very important, coz I was starting to worry about you guys. I know how annoying it is to try visit the blog and get that “I PWNED YOU” message.

We move on!

I don’t know if you guys noticed that we are running a Team Pataners Store (you can find it at the upper menu tabs). Right now we can only offer few designs, and we hope to be adding more really soon.

If there’s a T-Shirt I would wear while playing at GP Madrid would definitely be this “REAL MEN PLAY COMBO” one.

You can buy it at the price of $15.99 (11.65€). Visit our store, click, choose size and you are good to go!

As you might have noticed, lately the website is experiencing serious hosting problems. The hosting provider can’t handle how big the blog’s database has became, and apparently we are using too much resources from their CPU. That’s why you might get this message from time to time:

I’ll be moving the blog soon to a new hosting service. I hope you guys forgive me for the problems this might be causing you.

In order to provide our readers with the best possible reading experience, we’ve just released the mobile version of Team Pataners. Many users might check his favs with his or her iPhone / Nexus One / Nokia on a daily routine, and this is the main reason we think this is a big step forward towards communication. TP Mobile is optimized to work under any platform that uses 3G technology. All you need to do is to type in your mobile browser the same address http://www.team-pataners.com

The interface is simple and very intuitive and still, you won’t miss any of the important features that are needed in a blog like this. You can easily follow what news got new comments, check the archives, etc…

Hope you guys enjoy your new Team Pataners mobile experience!

A recent rumor has been launched to the net today. According to the official Facebook group from 2010 Grand Prix Madrid event, Mark Poole will be attending the GP!

True? I can’t tell you anything coz it hasn’t been said anything yet on the official site from the GP.

This, if true, is GREAT news! I can’t really believe it! I’ll keep you updated as soon as there’s more news!

As you might have noticed I’m working on a more simple, easy to navigate, and intuitive template for the blog. This might cause you some problems, so let me apologize for the inconvenience. I think this template offers a lot more possibilities than any other template tested in the past. It’s just a matter of time till I master it and make it work in its pure splendor.

Need to redesign the header of the blog, but I’m not 100% sure how it should look like. If you have any suggestions please let me know!

Soon, I’ll be able to announce something very cool. It comes in the form of a new co-writer for the blog. Someone you might already know from some of his articles for MTG Salvation. Ok, ok, I stop giving tips now! He deserve a presentation post for himself, so I ain’t unveiling his name yet! Who do you think he is?

It’s only a month left till we hit Grand Prix Madrid, and there’s something that worries me a lot. No, it’s not the decklist I’ll play that I’m worried about, it’s actually what artists are going to be present at the event. Considering the type of event, Legacy (Eternal), I hope they bring someone important. Someone with a huge card pool, from alpha to latest expansions. I also hope, they don’t bring Mark Tedin, Terese Nielsen or Rob Alexander. Why would I say that if they’ve actually drawn cards from alpha to nowadays? Simply, coz I’ve met them many times already. WotC should make an effort to make other artists travel around. I’m talking about artists like Ron Spears or Pete Venters, to name a couple. I know it’s not gonna happen; it’s just some wet dream of mine.

Anyways, last Sunday I headed to Badalona (lawless city next to Barcelona -  They should actually release a new video game called GTA: Badalona) to play the 1st tournament of the 2010 Catalan Vintage League (LCV). Only 50 players showed up due to a Legacy Grand Prix Trial (GPT) being held at Black Lotus Shop in Barcelona (70 players).

I was planning to play a different deck than the one I used to win the mini tournament at La Màquina del Temps a week ago, but I lacked the time to change it, so I decided to give it another try.

Regular structure for a tournament like this, 6 swiss rounds followed by top8. Prizes were pretty cool, at least for the winner: 1 Beta Tundra + 1 Beta Scrubland. Thumbs up for Alfredo, the organizer!.

My performance went from poor to lame. I scored a 2-4 total. The deck worked well, but I had the feeling my opponents had the hands of their lives. You know, when round after round, you lose being unable to actually play your cards. Lost 2 rounds against Vault/Key with FoW backup. Another one, where my opponent, in game 3, opens with Jet + Duress (taking my FoW), Sapphire + Ancestral, Swamp + Black Lotus, cracking for BBB, and casting Null Rod + Dark Confidant. I go Island, play Sol Ring (and still had 2 dual lands + Tinker in hand), and his Confidant reveals Strip Mine turn 2, and Wasteland turn 3. GG.

I might have made some mistakes, wrong hand choices and mulligans. But I’ve never felt smashed like this in a tournament before. Maybe it’s really me, who’s getting rusty. I know I ain’t play-testing that much lately, but I’m still confidant about my skills and about my knowledge of the format. Who knows…

Now, I’m 100% focused again in Legacy. I don’t think I’ll be able to test much before the GP, but that’s a thing that doesn’t worry me much. I’ve been playing combo decks in Legacy for ages now and there isn’t much to be seen or to worry about at this point. The only thing that is starting to annoy me, is the growth on the amount of decks abusing Natural Order/Progenitus. Man, that 2 card combo is overpowered. In the Legacy context it might be even more powerful than what Tinker is in Vintage. It’s not restricted (people is playing 2-3 copies of Natural Order) and the creep you put in play is even better than any Tinker Robot that you might put into play. I still hope they ban Tarmogoyf soon. Hey! Do you remember the Biezcorp video? (It’s in spanish, but worth watching)

That’s all for today folks!

Sorry for the inconvenience that this might cause to you. I’m still trying to find the best possible template to fit my needs as a writer and that offers the best for the reader. In that search, I’ve decided to reduce the amount of things on the main page, leaving it to the essentials.

Less is more. – Mies van der Rohe

Finally, after months of inactivity, I decided that this was a good time to return.

First of all I’d like to apologize to those who can’t read English. I know that the Team Pataners blog used to rule in Spanish, but, right now I got the feeling that I should write in English. The Spanish blog-sphere is somehow limited to some thousands of readers while, writing in English would allow me to reach some hundred thousands. If you are Spanish but can’t read English, feel free to use the Google language tools to translate the contents. Maybe in the near future I’ll write in both languages if I enjoy of enough time, meanwhile, English it is.

You might have noticed some changes in the aspect of the blog. Yes, I’m testing and working my ass off in this new template to make it more modern, cool-looking and accessible to all its content. I’d love to hear any kind of feedback about things that could be improved.

One of the things that bugged me most from the past were the annoying spamm comments generated by bots that managed to avoid the filters. As there is no way to delete only the spamm messages that were already aproved, I decided to delete absolutely all the comments from all the entries. I know this is a huge loss of many interesting comments, discussions, debates, etc… but, I think that is definetly worth doing it as I’d like to start from scratch.

The blog template offers me the possibility of adding featured content and other stuff that you’ll be discovering in the near future. I’m pretty influenced by some of the blogs/webs I read daily: Lifehacker, ALT1040, Gizmodo, etc… You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to find out some similarities between those blogs and this one. I’ll be trying out different types of publicity. The time will tell which ones are working well and which ones need to be improved. To start with, I’ve implemented a box with a series of eBay listings. In there, by clicking on the different categories the box will show a list of items from the chosen category. This box works similar to the banners I had in the past but it takes less room. Maybe in the future I’ll implement some of those banners too. The idea is to make it easier for the reader to fins those cards that he/she is interested on. Right now I don’t have any publicity agreement with any shop/web/artist, but I hope to be able to reach some agreements like the ones I had in the past with: ABU Games, Magic Card Market, Evolution Store, Rebellion, Ken Meyer Jr., etc…

Another aspect that I’d like to put some emphasis on is the pace and rhythm of the blog. I’m not forcing myself any rate of entries a day. Don’t expect to have new contents everyday. I won’t. This doesn’t mean that if I’m inspired and I feel like writing, you could see 1, 2, 3 or even more entries in a day. But, as I said, this will depend on how much spare time I feel like spending a day. Maybe I’ll spend a week without posting, maybe not!

About the contents of the blog. I’m gonna use the same line of contents that were used in the past. Obviously I’m gonna change some stuff. Probably I’m not gonna announce tournaments (maybe I’ll add some calendar), but I’m gonna keep writing reports. You’ll never miss the “pimp” stuff like my decks (or others), new cards, new alterations on the net, etc… You may ask me if I’m gonna put some “sauce” (LOL at literally translating “salsa” into English) while writing my articles/reports, and the answer is: YES. There’s gonna be plenty of salsa in this new era of the Team Pataners, I promise!

In the past I’ve often enjoyed the help from other team mates or collaborators to fill the blog with articles, fun entries, pictures, etc… I could never thank them enough for what they did for the blog. Now, I’m alone in front of the blog (again) but I’m opened for future collaborations. If you have any interest on helping me out, feel free to contact me to team.pataners@gmail.com Also, if you want me to post any content of yours (reports, pics from your decks, etc…), please send it to the same mail.

I’m working on the blog-roll, so if you wanna appear on it, please contact me and I’ll add your link to it. If you have a blog too, please add me to your blog as well. The blog-sphere should support each other with any kind of help. I link you, you link me. I don’t care how many visitors you have, I’ll always find a spot for your blog.

My idea is to make the official return during the 1st or 2nd week of January. On my next post I’ll elaborate a bit more on some other aspects that I might have left unexplained here. So…

This is it! (M.J.R.I.P.)

Hope you guys enjoy the comeback as much as I am.

Welcome back and thanks for reading!

En nuestro afán para mejorar día a día, hace cosa de un par de meses que nos pusimos en contacto con la gente de Magiccardmarket.eu y llegamos a un acuerdo para publicitar su portal. Siempre hemos creído que la publicidad tiene que ser un servicio para el consumidor y no para el anunciante, y es por esto que sólo publicitamos a los mejores.

En su día le pedí al responsable de Magiccardmarket.eu que nos mandase algunos datos sobre su portal para así yo poder escribir un artículo, éste, sobre el funcionamiento y sobre las ventajas que presenta Magiccardmarket ante sus rivales (eBay principalmente).

¿Qué es Magiccardmarket (MKM)?

Es un “mercadillo” donde cada uno puede vender y comprar cartas. La mayoría de los usuarios (mayores de 18 años) son privados pero tienen también unos vendedores profesionales. De hecho algunos han dejado completamente su propia tienda online y sólo venden en el MKM.

En MKM se venden todas las cartas de Magic, pero tambien Sets, sobres y cajas.

Es “un poco como ebay” pero mucho mejor.

Este es el aspecto inicial de la web.

¿Qué ventaja tiene para los vendedores?

1. Tenemos una base de datos con todas las cartas. Asi poner un articulo a la venta es super facil, lo haces con 4 clicks.
2. Todo se vende a precio fijo. Osea que el precio lo pones tu.
3. Es gratis poner articulos a la venta. Y no hay limites. Puedes poner tantas cartas que quieres y les dejar hasta que las vendes o que ya no quieres venderlas.
4. Si vendes un articulo, cobramos una comision que vale el 5% del precio de venta. Osea, mas barrato aún que ebay.
5. En MKM cada uno tiene una cuenta virtual. Es decir, no tienes que molestarte con tu banco a ver si la gente te haya pagado. Todo se hace x las cuentas virtuales. Si alguien ha comprado algo de ti, el sistema te avisa de lo que tengas q hacer. Una vez vendidas las cartas, tendras el dinero en tu cuenta virtual y la puedes transferir a tu cuenta de banco siempre que quieras y sin gastos. Esto realmente facilita la venta.

Vender es tan fácil como: Encontrar tu/s carta/s, determinar el estado, cantidad, idioma, etc… y hacer click.

¿Qué ventaja tiene para los compradores?

1. En el MKM se puede comprar cada carta Magic que existe. Con más de 10.000 usuarios en toda Europa, la oferta de cartas es muy grande.
2. En el MKM, los que venden son *jugadores*, o sea gente que sabe cuánto vale una carta y no quiere forrarse con la venta pero más bien venderlas para comprar otras cartas. Así tendrás los precios más justos (es decir, los más baratos) de toda Europa.
3. Es muy facil encontrar cartas pq tenemos una base de datos que te permite buscar exactamente lo que necesitas.
4. Sólo se compra a precio fijo. Osea que no tienes que esperar para que se acabe la subasta sin estar seguro que vas a obtener la carta.
5. Los gastos de envío los da el sistema. Asi siempre sabrás exactamente lo que vas a pagar y no te pasan cosas como en ebay: 50 cent la carta más 5 euros de gastos de envio.
6. En MKM tienes una cuenta virtual. Osea que puedes cargarla con dinero, lo que te permite comprar cartas “at instant-speed” porque el pago se hace en directo. Pero el sistema es muxo mas poderoso: Si compras cartas de 5 vendedores diferentes, no tienes pq hacer 5 trasferencias. Sólo tendras que pagar todo en una vez. Por trasferencia o por paypal. Así tus compras serán más fáciles y más rápidas.

Este es el resultado de hacer una búsqueda por “Mox Sapphire”, como véis todo muy gráfico gracias a su excelente interfaz.

La seguridad en Magiccardmarket

En el MKM puedes usar el sistema de pago a tres bandas ideado por MKM. Este sistema funciona así:

1. Tú pagas
2. Avisamos el vendedor que te mande las cartas, el dinero se queda con el MKM
3. Al recibir las cartas puedes comprobar que todo esté bien. Sólo si confirmas que has recibido las cartas correctamente, el vendedor recibirá su dinero. Si no estás satisfecho con el envío, MKM te devuelve el dinero.

Asi, los malos tienen la vida muy dura en MKM.

Y claro, también tienen un sistema de evaluacion parecido al de eBay, donde puedes ver si las cartas que vende el usuario son de buena calidad, si el embalaje está bien y sobretodo cuánto tiempo tardan los envíos a llegar a su destino.

Además, MKM dispone de un servicio de atención al cliente vía email para responder cualquier duda y solucionar cualquier problema en menos de 48h.

En resúmen:

Magiccardmarket.eu es más fácil, más rápido, más barato y más seguro que eBay. Y es sólo para Magic (no vayáis a creer que los demás TCG tienen alguna importacia )

¡Si aún no lo has probado, no sé a qué esperas!

PD: Tenéis el banner de la segunda columna de la derecha siempre a vuestra disposición.

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Ayer salía publicada la entrevista que, Camilo del blog Random South Player, me realizó hace unos días. Para quienes no conozcan RSP, decir que es la meca de la salsa magiquera (con nuestro permiso, obv xD), propiedad de unos sureños (.AND) y altamente recomendable para estar al día de todos los líos que suceden en el mundillo. Viene a ser como el “Qué me dices!” en formato blog y sobre Magic. Os dejo con el enlace para que podáis disfrutar de la entrevista:

Ratones Coloraos: el hombre del dia Jo….rdi Amat (alguien pensaba en Joel?)

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Joel Calafell, aka Zohan o Joel Falafell, acaba de ganar el Grand Prix de Barcelona! Desde aquí nuestra enhorabuena!

*Fuente de la imagen, RSP.

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Visto en la web de la DCI sobre sancionados:

First	Last	DCI #	City		Country	Start Date	End Date	Infraction
Abraham	Urena	9011163736	Mataro		Spain	2009/04/29	2013/04/29	Aggressive behavior

Malas noticias para la comunidad magiquera española (e internacional xDDD) ya que hoy hemos sabido que la DCI ha sancionado a Abraham Ureña con 4 años por lo sucedido en un torneo de la LCL. Terminator al final se ha salido con la suya y ha chapado al más mítico y “sagrao” jugador de la actualidad.

Esperemos y deseamos que la sanción pueda ser reducida, ya que dicha pérdida se va a notar, y mucho.

¡Ánimos Abraham!

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