I believe your assertions on FoW are correct. In fact, the data shows it. For those of you keen on looking up winning decklists, head over to www.classicquarter.com and you can look up every winning decklist for yourself.
If money is a problem, then money is a problem. For those of you who want to stay competitive in Classic on a budget, there will always be an option, but I think you'll find that there are almost always a couple of problems with that goal.
First, is that by limiting yourself in terms of budget, you might be limiting yourself in terms of deck choices. Cards are expensive when they are the most efficient at what they do and everyone wants them. In Classic, a lot of those cards are NOT IPA-forward. They exist in the past and so MEDs and Pre-IPA sets make the supply low. But if that's OK with you, then you still have another problem.
With limited deck choices comes limited meta. If you keep yourself to budget options, you are going to have to constantly pick up new decklists to adjust to a changing meta. So let's say right now you are looking at an MBC deck because it's budget. Then Exodus rolls out and you have to face a lot of Iona Oath, something that, very likely, MBC will be powerless to stop, since Iona will name black and destroy you. Now you need a whole new deck. Or you stop playing.
In the long run, budget options are almost never good for your budget. If you only plan for playing for a short while, then the choice is up to you.
Force of Will, Wasteland, Duals, Fetchs - these cards go into many decks and will most likely always be useful - never obsoleted.
That's actually not a bad idea if the cards could be tweaked here and there to fit the other 7 decks. Problem is...if you get a fail draw it really fails here (nontargetable creatures etc). On the other hand assuming the main decks will not be running mass enchantment removal(say primeval light or whatever the current standard format tranquility is)x4 (which would be rather bizarre) with an ok draw you are going to be constantly removing creatures or paralyzing them or taking control of them which means you could just win from having massive removal draws.
- the warpworld deck which is mentioned earlier is way better then that enchantress deck
- maybe an Enchantress deck like: (if there are any luminarch ascensions left the can be put in this deck ofc.)_
4 Mesa Enchantress
3 Wall of Reverence
3 Journey to Nowhere
3 pacifism
3 crystallization
3 draw 2 card Expedition
2 Oblivion Ring
3 Sigil of the Empty Throne
2 mind control
3 ardent plea
2 Hive's mind
3 mark of asylum
2 fatties maybe mirror sigil sergeant
24 land
I'm pretty excited about the MED Block format. Some of the decks you came up with are similar to ones I came up with, some are different. We'll have to do some testing.
I know what you're saying, and thought about qualifying that it's just my perception in my original post. But it always seems like every round of a swiss goes to time due to slow play, whereas the first round of a 4322 is usually pretty quick. And in a swiss, I might walk away to get a snack/do chores, further lengthening it.
I agree with ArchGenius about the psychology point.
Perhaps you lose more than 5% moving from 4-3-2-2 to 8-4. 10% seems like the minimum difference, knowing who they attract. And when practicing for a GP or other serious event, top players want 8-4s BECAUSE of the competition.
Approaching it from another angle, I think I'm probably about a 2/3s favorite going into any game in a Swiss draft. (Varies by format, mindset, etc, but generally speaking that's my estimate.) A result of just over 2 packs per draft payout average seems to confirm that. Before swiss existed, I was a bit lower, very close to 2 packs per draft in 4-3-2-2. So losing 5% there seems fair. But I don't like my odds at all in 8-4. I suspect if I had the money to sink into it, I would find over 10 drafts that I'm at a very low payout like ArchGenius discovered.
So my line is drawn at 65% Swiss, 60% 4-3-2-2 (which I wouldn't do since I can add and enjoy playing), and 40% 8-4. Which plants my butt firmly in the Swiss queues, thank you.
But to the point of the actual column, a 5% drop is only an 85c payout difference? That's considerably less than I'd assumed, and no single pick is going to hurt a draft too much. Obviously no one passes chase Rares in Swiss, but this means a 1tix Rare is worth it over a middling pick. That's good to know.
Oh, absolutely. Each pick has to be evaluated on its own merits, and the DeltaX of any given pick (that is, the change in win percentage) isn't much more than a rough guesstimate — my '5%' and '10%' figures are meant to be back-of-the-envelope starting points more than anything else, good enough to crank through the formulas and come out with a reasonable range for final numbers.
One additional factor you missed, incidentally, is that when you choose to pick a rare over the better card for your deck it often increases the DeltaX of the next rare-draft decision, as the falloff from the metaphorical '23rd card' to a 25th or even 26th card can be much steeper than the gap between the 22nd and 23rd. And contrariwise, if you think you can be assured of having plenty of depth in your draft — if you're obviously somehow the only black drafter at the table, for instance — then you can rare-draft more agressively than you might otherwise simply because your opportunity cost is drastically reduced. I've even had the joy of rare-drafting something midrange over a good card that tabled.
Oh, I understand completely — this is a factor I alluded to in the article a couple of times, but the truth is that it's so hard to estimate that I didn't even want to try here. I think what you're talking about is a smaller-scale version of the same phenomenon that I was talking about in one of the other replies with respect to why people play more drafts than sealed-deck events online; it's just much easier to scrape together 2 hours and maybe a little longer for a 4-3-2-2 draft than it is to manage a guaranteed three hours and often a bit more for a Swiss.
I don't think anyone actually plays to make money; given the outlay involved and the variance, it's likely impossible for even the best drafters to clear minimum wage — and that's assuming that they can successfully multitable! That being said, it's IMHO still worth the while to know when picking 'for profit' is a good idea, if only because it minimizes the extent to which drafts eat into your savings. If anything, I probably rare-draft less than I abstractly 'should' because most of my value comes in understanding how to draft a set and in playing the games.
Awesome article. Seriously awesome. I'd often weighed the opportunity cost of rare-drafting in my mind, but never took the time to work out the math and figure out exactly where the cutoff should be.
I only raredraft when I know for a fact that the particular rare I'm drafting is worth a pack or more. For example, I was Swissing the M10 drafts and got a Liliana Vess in pack 2, although I was red/green. I figured, "Hey, it's 5 tickets in the aftermarket, that's enough to pay for this pack and then some if I don't win." (Which is a big deal for me, since I'm so new to drafting, I gotta make a return somehow.)
There is an additional caveat here. Reading is not playing. I, for one, enjoy reading about formats I have little intention of playing if the articles are well written and formatted. In fact I think I prefer well written articles about "dead" formats than poorly written ones about popular formats. Just a preference but that just goes to show how diverse the internet may be.
hey give me a price range of exactly what I'm working with, I'll try to come up with something, and I won't cop out and give you dragonstompy. Just tell me what your budgets are like, next week I'm going to show you a control deck that doesn't use FOW, its something you can easily transition from std to classic, but if you guys want to give me a challange, I'm up for it, just note 150 bucks may not be classic tournie worth but i'll try!
I do occasionally feature a deck using a free avatar, although I haven't yet put several next to each other as an article theme. I will probably do this in the semi-near future (not the very-near future, as the next few articles are already written).
As for all of the "nobody likes vanguard" comments... can you guys learn to distinguish between what you like and what "everybody" likes? Vanguard may appeal to a very niche audience, but please recognize that that audience does exist, even if you personally are not part of it. For instance, I do not play 100 card singleton, but I am not about to say there shouldn't be articles on it.
i'll be honest i've never really played the format but these articles do make it interesting enough to try so im glad they are here. Though i would love to see some budget versions using the five free avatars.
Just to clarify, swiss draft does not attract slower players, the players are exactly the same.
The longer duration is because nobody gets eliminated in a Swiss, so there are 4 matches every round that needs to play out to its conclusion, chances are pretty good that at least one of those match is going to take the full hour.
In 4-3-2-2, and 8-4 drafts, every round, the number players and matches halves, so chances are that the round isn't going to take the whole hour for 2 matches to finish. And the finals is just you vs your opponent, theres no wait time.
I just want to reiterate this point. I know Swiss drafts are better EV than 4322, but my time costs money. Swiss drafts seem to attract slower players, and often run 3 hours, while 4322 drafts are usually over in less than 1.5 hours. If my time is worth $10/hr (conservatively), 4322s are the obvious choice. The only time I really like Swiss is when a set just comes out, and I need to get a feel for the format.
don't forget people that have stuff to do.. they think it's wise to join a 4-3-2-2 so they can draft some nice cards and have a shot at two tix before having to look busy again :)
reprete.- sketches. i wassent trying to build decks just give ideas, and it worked since you found a better card for the deck.
me myself and i.- yea on further retrospection they are mana light, that is classic's fault. sorry.
anon- m10 versions are fine as long as the card is in med 1 2 or 3.
lord ermna- thats an unfortunate by product of a new format. hopefully enough people will try their hand at the inaugrial pre. if they do i can get very detailed information about the event and the format as a whole.
it is free.
and its scheduled for a weekend in early december. i will do a poll in upcoming articles to determine the best time of day to run it.
First, I Like the attempt here GLIB.
I believe your assertions on FoW are correct. In fact, the data shows it. For those of you keen on looking up winning decklists, head over to www.classicquarter.com and you can look up every winning decklist for yourself.
If money is a problem, then money is a problem. For those of you who want to stay competitive in Classic on a budget, there will always be an option, but I think you'll find that there are almost always a couple of problems with that goal.
First, is that by limiting yourself in terms of budget, you might be limiting yourself in terms of deck choices. Cards are expensive when they are the most efficient at what they do and everyone wants them. In Classic, a lot of those cards are NOT IPA-forward. They exist in the past and so MEDs and Pre-IPA sets make the supply low. But if that's OK with you, then you still have another problem.
With limited deck choices comes limited meta. If you keep yourself to budget options, you are going to have to constantly pick up new decklists to adjust to a changing meta. So let's say right now you are looking at an MBC deck because it's budget. Then Exodus rolls out and you have to face a lot of Iona Oath, something that, very likely, MBC will be powerless to stop, since Iona will name black and destroy you. Now you need a whole new deck. Or you stop playing.
In the long run, budget options are almost never good for your budget. If you only plan for playing for a short while, then the choice is up to you.
Force of Will, Wasteland, Duals, Fetchs - these cards go into many decks and will most likely always be useful - never obsoleted.
For me personally around 250$. I have cards like Tarmogoyf (bought it at 25), but outright refuse to buy cards like FoW, Vindicate, Chant and such.
Anything about chat boxes/fields?
That's actually not a bad idea if the cards could be tweaked here and there to fit the other 7 decks. Problem is...if you get a fail draw it really fails here (nontargetable creatures etc). On the other hand assuming the main decks will not be running mass enchantment removal(say primeval light or whatever the current standard format tranquility is)x4 (which would be rather bizarre) with an ok draw you are going to be constantly removing creatures or paralyzing them or taking control of them which means you could just win from having massive removal draws.
- the warpworld deck which is mentioned earlier is way better then that enchantress deck
- maybe an Enchantress deck like: (if there are any luminarch ascensions left the can be put in this deck ofc.)_
4 Mesa Enchantress
3 Wall of Reverence
3 Journey to Nowhere
3 pacifism
3 crystallization
3 draw 2 card Expedition
2 Oblivion Ring
3 Sigil of the Empty Throne
2 mind control
3 ardent plea
2 Hive's mind
3 mark of asylum
2 fatties maybe mirror sigil sergeant
24 land
I'm pretty excited about the MED Block format. Some of the decks you came up with are similar to ones I came up with, some are different. We'll have to do some testing.
I know what you're saying, and thought about qualifying that it's just my perception in my original post. But it always seems like every round of a swiss goes to time due to slow play, whereas the first round of a 4322 is usually pretty quick. And in a swiss, I might walk away to get a snack/do chores, further lengthening it.
I agree with ArchGenius about the psychology point.
Perhaps you lose more than 5% moving from 4-3-2-2 to 8-4. 10% seems like the minimum difference, knowing who they attract. And when practicing for a GP or other serious event, top players want 8-4s BECAUSE of the competition.
Approaching it from another angle, I think I'm probably about a 2/3s favorite going into any game in a Swiss draft. (Varies by format, mindset, etc, but generally speaking that's my estimate.) A result of just over 2 packs per draft payout average seems to confirm that. Before swiss existed, I was a bit lower, very close to 2 packs per draft in 4-3-2-2. So losing 5% there seems fair. But I don't like my odds at all in 8-4. I suspect if I had the money to sink into it, I would find over 10 drafts that I'm at a very low payout like ArchGenius discovered.
So my line is drawn at 65% Swiss, 60% 4-3-2-2 (which I wouldn't do since I can add and enjoy playing), and 40% 8-4. Which plants my butt firmly in the Swiss queues, thank you.
But to the point of the actual column, a 5% drop is only an 85c payout difference? That's considerably less than I'd assumed, and no single pick is going to hurt a draft too much. Obviously no one passes chase Rares in Swiss, but this means a 1tix Rare is worth it over a middling pick. That's good to know.
Oh, absolutely. Each pick has to be evaluated on its own merits, and the DeltaX of any given pick (that is, the change in win percentage) isn't much more than a rough guesstimate — my '5%' and '10%' figures are meant to be back-of-the-envelope starting points more than anything else, good enough to crank through the formulas and come out with a reasonable range for final numbers.
One additional factor you missed, incidentally, is that when you choose to pick a rare over the better card for your deck it often increases the DeltaX of the next rare-draft decision, as the falloff from the metaphorical '23rd card' to a 25th or even 26th card can be much steeper than the gap between the 22nd and 23rd. And contrariwise, if you think you can be assured of having plenty of depth in your draft — if you're obviously somehow the only black drafter at the table, for instance — then you can rare-draft more agressively than you might otherwise simply because your opportunity cost is drastically reduced. I've even had the joy of rare-drafting something midrange over a good card that tabled.
Oh, I understand completely — this is a factor I alluded to in the article a couple of times, but the truth is that it's so hard to estimate that I didn't even want to try here. I think what you're talking about is a smaller-scale version of the same phenomenon that I was talking about in one of the other replies with respect to why people play more drafts than sealed-deck events online; it's just much easier to scrape together 2 hours and maybe a little longer for a 4-3-2-2 draft than it is to manage a guaranteed three hours and often a bit more for a Swiss.
I don't think anyone actually plays to make money; given the outlay involved and the variance, it's likely impossible for even the best drafters to clear minimum wage — and that's assuming that they can successfully multitable! That being said, it's IMHO still worth the while to know when picking 'for profit' is a good idea, if only because it minimizes the extent to which drafts eat into your savings. If anything, I probably rare-draft less than I abstractly 'should' because most of my value comes in understanding how to draft a set and in playing the games.
Awesome article. Seriously awesome. I'd often weighed the opportunity cost of rare-drafting in my mind, but never took the time to work out the math and figure out exactly where the cutoff should be.
yeah the free avatars are fun but the only one i can really think of a great use for is obviously Prodigal Sorcerer and combo decks.
I only raredraft when I know for a fact that the particular rare I'm drafting is worth a pack or more. For example, I was Swissing the M10 drafts and got a Liliana Vess in pack 2, although I was red/green. I figured, "Hey, it's 5 tickets in the aftermarket, that's enough to pay for this pack and then some if I don't win." (Which is a big deal for me, since I'm so new to drafting, I gotta make a return somehow.)
There is an additional caveat here. Reading is not playing. I, for one, enjoy reading about formats I have little intention of playing if the articles are well written and formatted. In fact I think I prefer well written articles about "dead" formats than poorly written ones about popular formats. Just a preference but that just goes to show how diverse the internet may be.
hey give me a price range of exactly what I'm working with, I'll try to come up with something, and I won't cop out and give you dragonstompy. Just tell me what your budgets are like, next week I'm going to show you a control deck that doesn't use FOW, its something you can easily transition from std to classic, but if you guys want to give me a challange, I'm up for it, just note 150 bucks may not be classic tournie worth but i'll try!
I actually really like this idea.
I do occasionally feature a deck using a free avatar, although I haven't yet put several next to each other as an article theme. I will probably do this in the semi-near future (not the very-near future, as the next few articles are already written).
As for all of the "nobody likes vanguard" comments... can you guys learn to distinguish between what you like and what "everybody" likes? Vanguard may appeal to a very niche audience, but please recognize that that audience does exist, even if you personally are not part of it. For instance, I do not play 100 card singleton, but I am not about to say there shouldn't be articles on it.
i'll be honest i've never really played the format but these articles do make it interesting enough to try so im glad they are here. Though i would love to see some budget versions using the five free avatars.
possibly goblin assault as well in this one
Just to clarify, swiss draft does not attract slower players, the players are exactly the same.
The longer duration is because nobody gets eliminated in a Swiss, so there are 4 matches every round that needs to play out to its conclusion, chances are pretty good that at least one of those match is going to take the full hour.
In 4-3-2-2, and 8-4 drafts, every round, the number players and matches halves, so chances are that the round isn't going to take the whole hour for 2 matches to finish. And the finals is just you vs your opponent, theres no wait time.
I just want to reiterate this point. I know Swiss drafts are better EV than 4322, but my time costs money. Swiss drafts seem to attract slower players, and often run 3 hours, while 4322 drafts are usually over in less than 1.5 hours. If my time is worth $10/hr (conservatively), 4322s are the obvious choice. The only time I really like Swiss is when a set just comes out, and I need to get a feel for the format.
...
Tix = packs in the above post
don't forget people that have stuff to do.. they think it's wise to join a 4-3-2-2 so they can draft some nice cards and have a shot at two tix before having to look busy again :)
This is a big group of people.
reprete.- sketches. i wassent trying to build decks just give ideas, and it worked since you found a better card for the deck.
me myself and i.- yea on further retrospection they are mana light, that is classic's fault. sorry.
anon- m10 versions are fine as long as the card is in med 1 2 or 3.
lord ermna- thats an unfortunate by product of a new format. hopefully enough people will try their hand at the inaugrial pre. if they do i can get very detailed information about the event and the format as a whole.
it is free.
and its scheduled for a weekend in early december. i will do a poll in upcoming articles to determine the best time of day to run it.
LED is half the cost and just as good. You also have a very very good matchup against dredge with these decks.