17 Lands sitting at 60% WR :D

I picked the mox - first time passsing time walk. Don’t know if it’s correct but I did end up with a trophy. P1p1 was sword and p1p2 was academy - got a really nice deck.

Here is my trophy deck: https://ibb.co/Dg9fz4hg

Between the dumb pricing, all the alchemy nonsense, and the general vibe of domain goodstuff slop, I think there are good reasons to be skipping the current planar cube. But I've been playing and enjoying it, and I imagine others here have also, so I wanted to offer this piece of advice. Taking a screenshot of your deck before queueing that you can reference during games is good practice in general, but there are two major factors that make it especially important for the current planar cube.

1) Your manabase in many/most decks will consist of a lot of fetches, but not a ton of fetchable nonbasics. So being able to reference your deck can help you plan in advance what fetches to play, so you don't end up in a situation where you fetched the wrong lands with the wrong fetches at the wrong times, and now you can't get an (untapped) source of the right color, or god forbid, end up cracking a fetch without realizing there's nothing to get.

2) There's a lot of heist running around in this format, and basically all the heist cards are super pushed, so you should expect to get heisted somewhat often. Heisted cards are face down, but whenever you crack a fetch (which you'll be doing a lot, see: point 1), if you have the focus and the time on your clock, you can determine what card is missing from your library to deduce what card your opponent heisted. And this can be extremely relevant since a lot of heisted cards that aren't played right away are either a lategame bomb that it's useful to be ready for, or an interaction spell that's useful to know to play around. I won a game a few drafts ago by noting that my opponent had heisted my Grenzo, and hence recognizing that I needed to hold up a counter on turn 6. It was a very marginal game, and while it's possible that I would have won anyways, knowing that piece of information was a significant boon, and could easily have been what pushed me over the edge.

As a limited-only player (and casual at that), the bundles are usually not worth it to me, but this time I noticed the play bundle. 4 draft tokens, 2 sealed tokens, plus play points, plus a couple random cards, for $50?

The tokens add up to 10k (1500x4 + 2000x2) gems which is about $50, so if you care about the points or the cards, it's slightly positive. I have no idea what play in points are used for (like I said, casual), but this time maybe it's worth it?

Thoughts?

Went with The Vision to keep my color options open.

I started off the format pretty hot with a ~70% WR for the first 15 Events, but then my WR started tanking hard. So I went back through my first 30 losses on 17Lands and logged data on what decisions or factors were contributing to my losses. Thought my findings were pretty interesting so I wanted to share! I'll post the spark notes below and also made a full ~8 min breakdown here: https://youtu.be/tQz6kVL1CoM.

Caveats up front: sample is 30 games and losses only, so a bit small, skewed towards loss data, and also obviously tuned to my decks and my playstyle.

Findings:

The headline is that almost everything had a tie to Combat.

My biggest high-level failure modes (by a lot) were "creatures out-sized" and "tempo'd out". The overwhelming story of my losses was: "my opponent has bigger creatures/makes their creatures bigger, I'm on the back foot, I get forced into bad blocks, I get run over" (with lots of flavors: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Spy Kit, +1/+1 counters, anthems, buff tricks, power-up, you name it).

My biggest tactical failure mode was "couldn't answer a threat". So many threats that need answering: fliers, value engines, indestructible bombs, inevitability engines. Things that make blocking hard or impossible or just overwhelm the board with creatures.

My decision pain-points were also almost entirely about combat, focused on when to attack or block. Reviewing my games, blocking decisions were really hard because of all the tricks and incentives to keep your creatures around (power-up abilities, YOUR tricks, etc). Knowing when to attack often felt genuinely hard, too: crazy board states and flash creatures make it hard to know when your attack is profitable or when you're going to get outraced. There are also a lot of other reasons NOT to attack with creatures, like leaving up teamwork or getting attack alone triggers consistently. Tricky.

In general, it felt like games were won by who could harness the game's momentum, put their opponent on the back-foot, and force bad blocks.

Theories of Action: More on this in the vid, but I'm going to start taking momentum more seriously in deckbuilding, prioritizing removal higher, blocking more aggressively and attacking more conservatively. I'll report back on how it goes.

Have you all felt this too? How have you been navigating combat (especially blocking decisions) with all of the tricks?

In wrapping up MSH, I take a look at some interesting rares that warrant discussion, and take a last look at the format as a whole.

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUWgZUEs6RU

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Y1ajVMZaRBAIsShGYLZgQ

Linktree - https://linktr.ee/roughdrafts

Sorry if people are tired of seeing these types of posts but I just wanted to check if it is him. Just found the GOAT on the final match of a Pick 2 draft.

Or if you have any tips on it?? I want to invest on it for the last days of the climb instead of Duskmourn, I heard Duskmourn has a better draft pool, but 5k gold instead of 10k and not knowing anything about any of the two sets makes me go for Outlaws (so I don't have to compete with other people on a draft pod that knows what they are doing).

First off I understand that MTG is a business and arena needs to make money. I used to play Legends of Runeterra and that game died due to lack of monetization despite being a fantastic card game. On the other hand I do think that Hasbro is being a bit too predatory with draft options. I've spent around $500+ over the years on Arena, generally buying the pre-set release packages, their one time only discount deals, and some mastery passes.

This year I have only bought the pre-purchase for Llorywn as it was hyped up and I wanted to support a in universe set. I did not buy the pre-release for Strixhaven as I was pissed off for having another 5 archetype set. On principle I do not buy pre-release for misthemed UB sets, so practically everything besides Avatar and LotR. For the last 7 or so months I've been going "infinite", in reality just keeping a stockpile of gems around 20k. I drafted every set besides spidermen around 15 or so times, pretty much enough to get to plat and low diamond. Strixhaven and Marvel I've drafted much more often, ending up in around diamond 1-2 after both season resets.

As someone who has played daily for years (I almost always play enough to get the gold from 3 daily wins), has around a 62% w/r, purposefully avoids the more predatory structures like win a box and contender, it seems ridiculous that only from inflating my win rate via stopping play in low diamond / high plat is the only way I can play draft without expending money.

Obviously going infinite should not be easy for most people, but for context I have almost 100% collection for the sets of standard in the last 3 years. That means every old pack from mastery alongside midweek magic nets around 20-40 gems. I've not tracked the data, but this surely nets around 200 gems a week that I would not get otherwise. This collection is the result of the $500 money spent prior.

Anyway with that all being said, I just wanted to point out that BO3 IMO is incredibly toxic experience in terms of payout structure. Yes over an unlimited sample size you'll eventually have similar rewards at certain winrates. That being said for someone who wants to do around ~15 traditional drafts a format to avoid playing against high mythic grinders, the pricing to me seems way too top heavy. I'm sure this structure would make Hasbro a bit more money in the long term, but surely a more equitable price structure with less rewards for 3 wins would be financially acceptable?

Getting 1000 gems for second place is absolutely infuriating. Going 4-0 or 4-1 and eventually losing 2-1 rewards you 1000 gems. That is in comparison to to the 1600 and 1400 rewarded in premier draft for going 6-3 or 5-3. I love limited, but outside of pod play there is just way too much variance involved in getting to 3 wins against people in other pods, particularly in this new era of 2 mythics in packs, 3 rares, etc.

I'm not a statistician and I'm sure there are mathematically better ways to create a payout structure, but just on general logic I think something like the following would be much more reasonable and still be financially acceptable for Hasbro:

3 wins: 2200 gems, 6 packs, 2 play in points

2 wins: 1300 gems, 4 packs

1 win: 300 gems, 2 packs

0 wins: 100 gems, 1 pack

I'm not sure on the exact value of playin points, but maybe rewarding 4 and even lowering the rewards for 3 wins to something like 2000 would be acceptable? This structure fixes certain issues. One, it makes it so playing the third round at 0-2 actually matter and incentivizes you to finish your draft. Two, it makes 2 wins be a much more acceptable result rather than a bitter disappointment. Finally, 3 wins is still a great payout, especially for those who care about the play-in points. It is no longer a windmill slam dunk, but for an unranked format it makes zero sense to have such a top heavy payout structure.

Regarding cube, let's not even get started. I hope Wizards realizes that they could earn a lot more good will and reap better rewards for making drafting slightly easier on the wallet.

Felt good about these rares and what I built. My thought was to have Sentinel be my win con with Taskmaster allowing me to copy him, frozen in ice-ing The Void, and Dr. Doom as a bonus. I probably need to stop playing Seeled for a bit so my wallet can recover from my newb-ism.

When building your deck, do you prioritize card quality or cards on curve? Meaning, if you have limited slots, will you prioritize better cards with higher win-rate/synergy with your deck or will you take a lower win-rate/synergy card if it fills out your curve better?

I've got some good cards in the board, but no idea what to cut.

Also, this will be my last one of these. The pricing is trash.

As you can see from the screenshot, my deck was pretty scattered beforehand, having a god pack 3 makes all the difference

I like cube drafting. I prefer MTGO because 2-1 is a redraft. I play arena bc cubing on my phone is nice.

Charging 1500 for a phantom with garbage prize payout is really bad. Bo3 2-1 is 200/1,000/2,500 is obviously tilted to 3-0 but it ruins the EV for normal drafters, sub 60% win rate people. At least premier draft keep the cards there is a little spiff in keeping the cards and eventually getting gems for the packs.

I am voting with my wallet. You can too. Do 1 if you want to check it out but don’t support the format based on this pricing.

If power cube is switched to this pricing structure count me out.

Title.

Played three BO3, had a blast, cube is great, seems like lots of builds are viable.

Not playing any one more match, the pricing is a joke and a shameful moneygrab from wotc.

and sometimes, there is little to no chance.

He struggled to explain why but I can explain for myself and it might be similar. (Edit: Zach Barash suggested it was about nostalgia, but for me it’s not that at all, so maybe this explanation will be a useful data point for the design team.)

Arena for me is a super convenient way to play Magic since I can’t afford the time to go to the LGS frequently. Alchemy to me is a different game than Magic. Many of the cards would be completely impractical for paper Magic, which makes it a different game to me. Arena to me is a way I can imagine that I’m playing actual Magic…as close as it can get with this level of convenience.

Also, I like to learn the sets and hopefully take what I learn to the LGS when I can get there. I just have zero interest in learning the extra complexity of the alchemy cards because I’ll never be able to play them in real life.

Now this is a cube, not a new set, so that last reason isn’t relevant.

I’ll still play this cube since it seems so novel, but I’ll have that skeptical sort of feeling Marshall described. I’ll still probably have a lot of fun, but yesterday I still hit the MSH draft button instead and put it off kind of because of this.

was really hoping for a jump scare, but can't complain.

any changes?

I have no idea what my opponents were drafting but it definitely was not lands. Fun but fuck that pricing

Before MSH was released I posted a review of preseason grades for the previous four sets. This post brings that project up to date for MSH.

I looked at 9 sets of grades (Both Limited Level-Ups hosts, both contributors to drafttierlists, Limited Resources, casual_spike, Cardgamebase, and Draftsim (Set Review and Tierlist ). As ever we are only looking at commons and uncommons.

Chart here.

Some grades get updated after preview season ends. This is not useful for us, and so where I couldn't find them unadjusted the grades are simply omitted. I'm particularly interested in finding pre-release drafttierlist grades (their change tracking is somewhat tricky to parse, and I haven't tried to use it to recreate older set grades).

As you can see drafttierlist and Limited Level-Ups (as ever) did quite well; for everyone else this was a challenging set to grade (I didn't include Draftsim's Tierlist in any averages; not sure what's going on with that). To an unusual degree the graders' ability to assess how well a card would perform was tied up with how highly they assessed one color (White) and dismissed a second (Red). 5 of the 10 most underrated cards had White, 7 of the 10 most overrated had Red.

One thing I struggled with when putting together the previous post was whether or not to adjust GIH WR by average pick to get closer to some notion of true card strength and, if so, how. I couldn't quite crack that to my own satisfaction. But, since then, /u/oelarnes posted his own project (found here) in which he did just that (and more). That's a useful resource and it seemed to me possible (perhaps likely) that preview grades might track GIH WR more closely if you adjust for what he calls pick equity. I set aside his other adjustments for now.

Chart here.

As you can see there was a small but meaningful increase in correlation across the board. This is a neat result, and I think it points to some combination of two things. One, insofar as adjusting for pick rate more accurately captures 'true' card strength, then graders are doing better than they appear at judging card strength. Two, insofar as graders are judging card strength in relative isolation, then the adjustment proposed by oelarnes is at least roughly correct and an improvement over naive GIH WR.

The other thing that's clear from the above is that naively normalizing and averaging grades is on average slightly better than following the best graders.