The Oracle Has Fallen

As a long time player and judge, we always take card information and oracle text from Gatherer as the default and trusted source. That is the reason why Bugko card database is build base on card information available in Gatherer. The low maintenance effort from Wizards and many problems that plagued on Gatherer has forced us to reevaluate whatever Gatherer is still suitable as the reliable source of the card information / oracle text.

Here are a few problems that long reported by player yet Gatherer / Wizards take no action to fix them.

• Missing +2 Mace in Adventures of the Forgotten Realms.
• Webpage error in some of the double faced card: Hanweir Militia Captain and Heir of Falkenrath.
• Some modal double faced card has the incorrect card image.
• Missing square bracket in the oracle text of Cleave card. Example: Dread Fugue, Inspired Idea and Path of Peril.
• Many cards from secret lair set are still missing or did not get updated.

The worse? The report link in Gatherer are also broken! Voicing and feedback through Twitter does nothing to fix the problem.

After much consideration, we have decided to move away from Gatherer as the source of the cards database. We will rebuild Bugko offline database base on Scryfall which we think it has the best community support. It will be a painful process and required a lot of effort on development to do so. Please bare with us while we go through this painful transition. It must be done in order to give our users, players and judges the most accurate and up-to-dated card information and oracle text in their game and judging duty.

Advertisement

7.2.0: Midnight Hunt + New Features

Werewolf, vampire or angel? It is Innistrad: Midnight Hunt update. It is not just a regular set update, it is an update packed with a lot of new features and improvement. Ready to check out what new in this release? Let’s go.

Let’s start with the cards database. This release included the latest set Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Commander. There is also a bunch of banlist update: Pauper, Historic, Tiny Leader, Commander, Duel Commander and Canadian Highlander. Apparently Tiny Leader format is not dead yet. Oh, Standard rotation too!

We are very proud of the card search capability in Bugko and now it is getting better than before. Now you can search cards with X mana cost. If you are building devotion deck and looking for card with highest devotion first, then you can now sort the card result according to card mana cost devotion. Or maybe you want to update your 2 years old commander deck and looking for cards that are printed recently, then you can sort the card result according the first printed date. Yes, it is a very useful way to look through card when you update your deck.

Are you still using converted mana cost instead of mana value? So do we, but we don’t want to confuse any new player, so now all converted mana cost label will updated to mana value / converted mana cost. Win win for everyone. Oh, talking about mana value / converted mana cost, they can be very confusing when involve split card, so we added total mana value / total converted mana cost in card details when relevant to help educate player about this.

Day / night token card to keep track day / night in game? How about a newly added day night counter in life counter that help to track that instead. One extra tips: to reset the day night counter to either day nor night, just long press on the counter. A slight visual changes on Monarch and City’s Blessing counter, they no longer show the ON / OFF text. They are replaced with different icon to represent ON / OFF status.

With the release modal double faced cards and adventure cards, analyze a decklist can become very challenging. What is the actual land count? Decklist and graphwill now take into consideration of modal double faced card, adventure card, aftermath card and split card when showing the total number. We believe this will significantly help in understanding the card type / land count / mana curve in deck.

There are still a lot other enhancement and bug fixes we don’t have time to write in details. Please read the changelog for more details information.

7.1.4-7.1.6: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms

Time for some adventures! Into the dungeons! Adventures in the Forgotten Realms now available. Although we release Adventures in the Forgotten Realms database update in version 7.1.4, we take our time to update the whole database due to latest oracle text changes and type changes. The complete database update update is available in version 7.1.6.

Commander banlist update, Hullbreacher is gone! Comprehensive Rules (CR) and Magic Tournament Rules (MTR) are both updated to the latest version in database and document. We missed the Historic banlist update, we will make sure this will get into the next release.

Ops. We release an emergency version 7.1.5 to fix a startup crash on Android platform. Sorry for the trouble caused.

7.1.3: Modern Horizons 2

Modern Horizon 2 is here. Lets show Standard format how Modern format kill others in 4 turns. Wait, you only play Commander ? OK, there are still plenty of sweet cards for Commander in Modern Horizon 2. Oh, you play Historic only? Then I have a bad news for you. Time Wrap is now banned.

7.1.1-7.1.2: Update & Bug Fixes

We still receive multiple emails and messages regarding the Card Market pricing is unavailable in the app. Here is the previous post explaining what happened. Up until today, we still have no access to the pricing API of Card Market and it seem the API is not coming back any time soon. Instead of waiting for the API, we have update the app card pricing from Card Market via their website. It is not a good implementation, much slower than API and less data / information. We think this is a reasonable workaround until the API is up running again.

Double faced card and flip card always have some weird problem when retrieving card pricing due to different naming convention use in each site. We have spend a lot of time to fix them in the latest release. If you are looking for Channel Fireball or Star City Games card pricing, they are available in the card price details (you need to click on the card price in card details to access them).

Judges, we know it has been more than a year that you haven’t judge in any tournament, but here is the comprehensive rules (CR) and magic tournament rules (MTR) updated. Banlist for Highlander and Oathbreaker (I guess the format is still alive and the banlist get update annually?) are also update.

There are many changes and bug fixes that release in a few previous versions that we didn’t get cover in the blog. Please refer the the changelog for the full details.

7.1.0: Strixhaven + Commander 2021

It has been a while since the last blog post. Sorry for not updating the app development as much as possible. First thing, first, Card Market pricing is temporary unable in app, here is the details.

What new in this version? Card database updated to include Strixhaven: School of Mages, Strixhaven Mystical Archive and Commander 2021. In order to continue support the app, we have increased the minimum version of Windows from 10.0.16299 to 10.0.17763. If you are still running the older version of Windows, we highly recommend you to update your Windows device.

There are many changes and bug fixes that release in a few previous versions that we didn’t get cover in the blog. Please refer the the changelog for the full details.

Magic Card Market Pricing Temporary Unavailable

We received a bug report that card pricing from magic card market doesn’t load in the app. After communicating with card market support team, we found out that all API access to Card Market server is revoked due to their server is overloading. There are no time estimation when this problem will be fix or their API 3.0 will be release. This mean magic card market pricing will not be available in the app until further notice.

7.0.0-7.0.2 Commander Legends + New News Channels + Android Changes

Sorry for taking such a long time to update the changes after releasing version 7 for a while. We decided to bump the major version from 6 to 7 because on Android platform, the app will no longer support Android device running lower than Lollipop (version 21). Previously the app support KitKat (version 19), but support on older version is getting harder and problematic so we decided to move the minimum version to Lollipop (version 21). Other platforms remain the same.

What new in this version? Commander Legends is now available in the cards database. Due to many cards in Commander Legends have multiple art variation, some users found that it is confusing and we agreed. Now search result will hide multiple copy of art variation but user can still show multiple copy of art variation in search result through search result option if they prefer. Modal double faced card is very powerful and very popular in multiple formats, thus the app is now make sure it get calculated correctly in deck detail’s chart and also work correctly in deck simulator.

4 new news channels this time. Aether Hub, The Budget Magic Cast, Commander Mechanic and MTGRemy. They are awesome, remember to check them out and subscribe so you will get notification once they have a new video / article posted. Unfortunately, Eternal Magic is going away because the site no longer accessible and no longer active.

6.4.11-6.4.14 Release: Zendikar Rising + Standard Banlist Update

<p value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80">4 updates in a week, there is a lot to cover. First, Zendikar Rising is finally here after much delay. This include Zendikar Command and Expedition as well in the database. The long delay is due to Gatherer was not updated even after Zendikar Rising was officially released. Banlist is also updated with Standard rotation and <a href="https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/september-28-2020-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2020-09-28&quot; target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a new ban of Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath</a> in the format.4 updates in a week, there is a lot to cover. First, Zendikar Rising is finally here after much delay. This include Zendikar Command and Expedition as well in the database. The long delay is due to Gatherer was not updated even after Zendikar Rising was officially released. Banlist is also updated with Standard rotation and a new ban of Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath in the format.

There are some big update in news channels as well. A new channel is added: Jake and Joel are Magic. We have bring back one of our favorite channel which the author is back in action again: CardBoard Crack. Channel Fireball channel is now split into Channel Fireball and Channel Fireball Pro.

Even through there are no paper tournament running, but this doesn’t stop us continue to update judge related feature. Comprehensive rules (CR), magic tournament rules (MTR) and infraction procedure guide (IPG) are updated in the document and database.

We fixed a few bugs which include double faced card pricing and Android 11 crash. Check them out in the change log below. That’s all for now, stay safe everyone.

6.4.9-6.4.10 Release: Banlist Update + Bug Fixes

Good news, Bugko is back in Windows Store. Wizards was concerned about the app having “Magic: the Gathering” keyword in the app title and might confuse users that it is an official app. We are forced to remove the app from Windows Store temporary to address this issue. We replaced the keyword as requested and clearly labelled the app as an unofficial MTG tool not developed by Wizards / Hasbro.

We have two minor but important bug fix update released. Thanks for the bug reported, we found out that Rin and Seri, Inseparable was missing in Core Set 2011 database. The background story is our database is base on information extracted from Gatherer. Rin and Seri, Inseparable was not in Gatherer on the first day when Core Set 2011 is available in Gatherer, thus it was missing in the database when we extract the information. We have already added the card into the database. It is our fault for not double checking the correctness of the information extracted. We promise to do the better in future release.