This is just a quick reminder of the shortcuts in Lord of the Deck, since they can make the program much, much easier to use:
• Typing the name of a card selects it in the main list. This is by far the best way to enter your cards into the program if you don't have them already entered into a spreadsheet program. (This function only works properly when the main list is sorted alphabetically.)
• Pressing return is the same as pressing the add button.
• Pressing the backspace key is the same as pressing the LotD delete button.
• Holding down a number key (not on the keypad) while pressing add (or return) or delete (or backspace) will add or delete that quantity of the selected card(s) from your deck.
• Holding down option while clicking on the delete button deletes the entire selected line(s) from your deck.
• Option-clicking on a card in the deck list cycles it's card set. The results of this aren't apparent unless you have checked the card set item under the show menu.
• Option-clicking on the Info button includes land cards in the color, rarity, and set information shown.
• While the program is starting up, you can cancel the loading of card texts, card prices, and/or your collection by typing -. (that's the command key and a period).
Changes made since v2.3
• The Homelands expansion was added. Again, since this is a small expansion (145 cards), there are no true 'rare' cards, only common and uncommon. I have labeled the U1 cards as rare, the U3 and C1 cards as uncommon, and the C4 cards as common.
• Lord of the Deck now has a larger window for 13" monitors. There's nothing you have to do in order to make it use the larger screen, the program will automatically detect whether or not your screen is large enough.
• All of the card texts were summarized. This was done to fall in line with the legal guidelines set down by Wizards of the Coast, and was largely due to the late release of this new version. I am sure that there are some typos and other errors in the texts, so let me know if you find any.
By the way, a special thanks to Lyman Green who helped me out by summarizing about 200 of the cards.
• Lord of the Deck now supports card prices. In order for the program to use prices, you must supply the price list. LotD expects to find the price list in this form:
card name, price,
For example:
Adarkar Wastes, 3.46,
The number of spaces after the card name doesn't matter. This makes Cloister's price list ideal for LotD. All you have to do is drop the price list into the same folder as Lord of the Deck, set the file's name in LotD's preferences, and the program will read in the prices at startup.
Take these prices with a grain of salt. Lord of the Deck does not differentiate between print runs when associating prices with cards. Although Cloister's list does list different entries for cards that appear in different sets (e.g. Legends and Chronicles, or Ice Age and the basic sets), it is generally a poor indicator since most people who post the card prices don't follow Cloister's naming conventions. This leads to most of the 'newer' print cards having only a few data points from which to compute the raw average. This is not good. For example, in the current list that I have, the Banshee from The Dark has 222 data points whereas the Chronicles one has only 1 data point. Undoubtedly, many of the data points for the first are for Chronicles Banshees, but Cloister's program has no way of knowing that.
Since the price difference between many of these different print runs is close, I'm not worrying with supporting multiple sets for the same cards. The most drastic difference I can find is with the Icy Manipulator which was reprinted in Ice Age. The Ice Age one is listed at about $6 whereas the original is at $12. If Cloister's list somehow starts being able to accurately differentiate between sets, then I'll worry with supporting it.
Currently, the program only displays prices for single cards. Hopefully, it will show you the total price of a deck in a future version.
• Support for collections was added and the 'Custom' popup menu was removed. In order for LotD to read in your collection, you must create Lord of the Deck files which make up your collection and store them in a folder named 'Collection' inside the Lord of the Deck folder. It is not recommended that you create one huge file with all your cards in it; doing that will create an unwieldy file that will take a long time to load and edit. In addition, using huge files may require you to increase the memory partition for the Lord of the Deck application.
It is suggested that you organize your collection into subsets of small files, either by color, by set, by type, whatever. For example, when entering my entire collection, I entered all my blue cards and saved them in one file, then entered my black cards and entered them into a file, etc. I then store all of these files into the Collection folder and let Lord of the Deck read all of them in at startup. When I receive new cards, I add them to a file I named 'Additions' instead of bothering with sorting through the individual color files. I plan to implement a feature in the near future that will 'clean up' your collection folder, automatically sorting through your collection and saving each card according to color, set, or whatever you choose.
With this new collection support, you can sort through your collection using the popup menus (color, rarity, set, and type). This lets you sift through just the cards you have, instead of having to look through the entire database. Also, the number of each card in your collection is displayed in the Main List.
This functionality has a small bug. If you do not have a folder named 'Collection' in your LotD folder, and you have deck files inside the LotD folder, the program will read in those files as your collection on some machines. I haven't figured out why this happens on some machines and not others, but I didn't want to delay this release any further for such a minor bug. Just be sure you have a folder named 'Collection' in the Lord of the Deck folder at all times.
• Several card names that were misspelled were corrected.
Stuff that didn't make it into v2.4
These are features that I'm still planning on implementing, but did not make it into v2.4:
• Better printing and text exporting. I'm working on letting the user decide what format to use for both of these, so you won't be locked into any one format.
• Tournament features: legality information for your decks (are they legal for Type I, Type II, etc. tournaments? The program will tell you!). Sideboard support and more.
• Comments: I'm working on letting you enter comments for individual decks.
