I don't like the stat analysis of rare drafting. The major problem is that X is arbitrary, i.e. completely made up in all cases. Say it's p2p1 and you are looking at a super playable card vs a rare draft...well you don't really know how much that playable card will help your deck since you still have half the deck to draft. You have no idea how much a single card will help your chances of winning and if you never draw it (has happened to all of us) it helped your chances by 0%.
I have a very simple rule when decided between playable vs for the tix: if the card is worth a pack (3-4 tix) take it, otherwise go the playable. If it's a bunch of chaff vs a 2 tix card I take the 2 tix every time, but I don't think that was the point of your article.
It SHOULD be common sense that since 4-3-2-2 pays out 11 packs and Swiss pays out 12 with the same entry fee that in the long run your expected average payout will ALWAYS be higher with Swiss (or 8-4), yet 4322 is still the most popular format. The common argument is that Swiss is too long and 8-4 is too hard so people go with 4322. It makes no mathematical sense, but people still do it. You would think being able to lose the first round and still win 2 packs would be attractive to people, but I guess it just isn't.
If nothing else, it shows how difficult it is to make a profit through rare-drafting.
Like you said this analysis is good as a hard-and-fast guideline. As a model of a typical draft situation I don't think it's very accurate. That's because in any single-elimination or swiss type event, you're probability of winning each round changes. The last round of a 8-4 draft is most often much more difficult than the first round. If you're playing swiss, the last round with a 2-0 record is going to be much more difficult than a last round with a 0-2 record. Of course, modeling that type of situation is an order of magnitude more difficult than modeling constant win percentages. And, in the end, it's probably a waste of time.
I don't think many drafters look all that closely at the expected value of winning prizes. If they did, they would probably see that they have to do a lot better at drafting than sealed deck or constructed in order to win the same level of prizes.
Rare-Drafting is kind of like the lottery. Players don't look at the probability of opening a Baneslayer Angel or Lotus Cobra, but they draft because it gives them the feeling that they could get a "free" draft by simply being lucky and opening one of those cards. Even the thrill of the possibility of opening one of these cards makes drafting worth it despite the difficulty in making a profit. And even if I don't open that Baneslayer Angel, there is always that possibility that I can win my way to another chance at it.
Power Conduit is awesome, and about the only thing you missed was how it interacts with persist creatures, and the avatar. Having a Murderous Redcap persist back to play and adding a +1/+1 counter so you can beam 3 damage ,or a Kitchen Finks so you can gain 2 life and making it a 4/3 beater only to forces to be killed twice, or exiled.
Relentless Rats has card text that overwrites the game rules.
The first golden rule of Magic (CR 103, IIRC) is that if a card rule confilcts with the omp rules, the card rule wins.
However, that only applies to the comp rules. Relentless Rats does not overwrite the tournmanet rules, Magic infraction procedure guide, etc.
In this case, the four-of and one-of rule is in the tournament description. Relentless Rats cannot chew that up. (And, yes, I confirmed that with both Mike Gills and the Level 5 judges while at PT Austin.)
Bummer, because the Relentless Rats deck might have worked.
Are you sure this is correct? I'm pretty sure you're allowed as many as you like in standard, although I don't know how this challenge was worded. Did it say "4 of each standard legal card (except basic lands)", or did it say "within deck building constraints for a standard deck" or words to that effect?
Either way, it probably wants a lot of the support cards from the vampires deck, surely?
Guess I will
Not sure how it will turn out yet thinking about something like ... hi this is me, the deck and why i choose it, then run it through a few games and then look to improve it and run it through a few more.
It's not an amazing deck, but something like the valakut "combo" deck could maybe fill the hole better than the strange enchantress thing? I don't have a list off the top of my head, but it's something like:
The sideboard has hellkites and some other random stuff.
The basic idea is just to stall while you get valakut and 1 forest, then play a million acceleration spells to get loads of mountains, and valakut/burn them out. It does test a little better than it ssounds, and doesn't encroach much on the other decks that you've posted, so maybe could be worth consideration.
I'd also wonder about putting 1-2 platinum angel's in sideboards here and there. with the removal having to be spread out all over the place, there might be a few decks show up with no removal at all, allowing the ultimate mise? Just an idea..
Wow, thanks for putting my deck on here. You pretty much have the whole deck with one small change. Instead of Rolling Thunder, I use Rolling Earthquake from Masters Edition 3. This gives the deck a sweeper against everything except Horsemanship, (which I don't run into often.)
All this is being done in the HTML portion of the editor (the switch link is at the bottom of your article page right under the article text box.)
HTML is very simple and is plain text (meaning you don't need to know much "language" to get it.)
When Jamuraa's ap makes the html for you, you will notice that it puts all the cards it doesn't recognize in the other spells section. This maybe intended to be a feature but in fact isn't very useful. The way you fix this is copy and paste the whole thing into a text file and then rearrange the card names that are wrong and then move that to the HTML of your article.
it should like something like:
<strong>Creatures</strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 70%">0 cards</span><br /><br />
Also you can't make the links work automatically if they don't work on the site but you can add your own a tags with urls pointing to Gatherer with the correct card image.
For example:
Xira Arien, go to gatherer: http://gatherer.wizards.com/
type in the name: Xira Arien
right click on the picture and click Properties and you see the following url to the image:
'http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=201208&type=card'
Notice the only thing that changes here is the multiverseid attribute, so when you look up cards as long as your url is formed as above you can just insert the new id# in the place of the old one and viola you have a source for an IMG or A tag.
Here is my thought on writing an article: Do it. If you decide you don't want to publish it don't but write it and see how you feel afterward. It is possible you will have something interesting to contribute. Even if you feel your ability isn't great someone else may garner pearls from your effort.
Quote "I've tried to be objective but I'm disappointed after this. I hold no ill will with people playing whatever deck they want, but I wish a deck that follows the intent of the format would win."
I have tried :( and I think on week three if I had not played the Arena (in the second game in the final) and kept my Mana open and played a mortify in response to the equipment being played it might have been a different outcome.... so my really bad play did not help..
That is not a say he was not holding another wizard.
The Vampires looking good though similar to what Flip played this week i think
Do have a question though why not 4 Dark Depths?
and the really good news ... the Allies (hmm should that be Ally's) have been born and so far they rock in fact it the most fun and competitive deck I have ever made for 20tiks (maybe even less not sure on the prices of the rare Dual lands), which i am thinking about writing an article on, but if any of you regular guys are working on one let me know as I wont, I not written a magic article in a long time so would prefer to leave it to the pros but i am willing if no ones minds.
This sure is a fine idea (the PRE I mean), and I finally found myself a nice deck to play. But the real problem will be testing it. After all, I don't think that anyone would join my Classic game advertised as "!!!MED BLOCK ONLY!!!". And besides it isn't a nice and friendly casual deck so Casual Room isn't an option. And as I said, no one in the TP Room would join my MED Block only game.
I'll see what I can do and maybe I'll join without any serious practice (after all the tourney is free right?). When is this event going to happen by the way?
Relentless Rats is not spared the deck building requirements. You're allowed 10 in a Standard deck, one in an EDH deck, and only 4 among all decks in this challenge.
But if it worked, it would be an awesome suggestion.
When is the Masters Edition tournament happening? I've been playing an all-ME3 deck in the casual room that does ok, so I'm interested. Also, how strict will you be about the set each card comes from? Lightning bolt was in a Master's Edition, but could I use the M10 version?
You have verdand catacombs in the Enchantress deck and the Jund deck.
I thought someone would pull together a relentless rats deck because of the less impact it would have on the other decks. 23 swamps, 20 rats, 4 coat of arms, 4 Consume spirit (since tendrils is used), add in a couple of tutors and whatever removal you can fish up.
The rats deck using less resources frees up cards for the other decks.
I petition for no more articles by cotton regarding vanguard. Its a dead format that generates no extra revenue for mtgotraders nor does it create any general excitement to further MtGO. The only benefit is to the writer who gets some credit probably to play some valid format.
I don't like the stat analysis of rare drafting. The major problem is that X is arbitrary, i.e. completely made up in all cases. Say it's p2p1 and you are looking at a super playable card vs a rare draft...well you don't really know how much that playable card will help your deck since you still have half the deck to draft. You have no idea how much a single card will help your chances of winning and if you never draw it (has happened to all of us) it helped your chances by 0%.
I have a very simple rule when decided between playable vs for the tix: if the card is worth a pack (3-4 tix) take it, otherwise go the playable. If it's a bunch of chaff vs a 2 tix card I take the 2 tix every time, but I don't think that was the point of your article.
It SHOULD be common sense that since 4-3-2-2 pays out 11 packs and Swiss pays out 12 with the same entry fee that in the long run your expected average payout will ALWAYS be higher with Swiss (or 8-4), yet 4322 is still the most popular format. The common argument is that Swiss is too long and 8-4 is too hard so people go with 4322. It makes no mathematical sense, but people still do it. You would think being able to lose the first round and still win 2 packs would be attractive to people, but I guess it just isn't.
Sounds good.
I guess that means we should include Gleemox in one of our 100CS decks... since the 100CS tournament rules do not ban Gleemox from deck construction.
As a math guy, I like this kind of article.
If nothing else, it shows how difficult it is to make a profit through rare-drafting.
Like you said this analysis is good as a hard-and-fast guideline. As a model of a typical draft situation I don't think it's very accurate. That's because in any single-elimination or swiss type event, you're probability of winning each round changes. The last round of a 8-4 draft is most often much more difficult than the first round. If you're playing swiss, the last round with a 2-0 record is going to be much more difficult than a last round with a 0-2 record. Of course, modeling that type of situation is an order of magnitude more difficult than modeling constant win percentages. And, in the end, it's probably a waste of time.
I don't think many drafters look all that closely at the expected value of winning prizes. If they did, they would probably see that they have to do a lot better at drafting than sealed deck or constructed in order to win the same level of prizes.
Rare-Drafting is kind of like the lottery. Players don't look at the probability of opening a Baneslayer Angel or Lotus Cobra, but they draft because it gives them the feeling that they could get a "free" draft by simply being lucky and opening one of those cards. Even the thrill of the possibility of opening one of these cards makes drafting worth it despite the difficulty in making a profit. And even if I don't open that Baneslayer Angel, there is always that possibility that I can win my way to another chance at it.
Power Conduit is awesome, and about the only thing you missed was how it interacts with persist creatures, and the avatar. Having a Murderous Redcap persist back to play and adding a +1/+1 counter so you can beam 3 damage ,or a Kitchen Finks so you can gain 2 life and making it a 4/3 beater only to forces to be killed twice, or exiled.
Relentless Rats has card text that overwrites the game rules.
The first golden rule of Magic (CR 103, IIRC) is that if a card rule confilcts with the omp rules, the card rule wins.
However, that only applies to the comp rules. Relentless Rats does not overwrite the tournmanet rules, Magic infraction procedure guide, etc.
In this case, the four-of and one-of rule is in the tournament description. Relentless Rats cannot chew that up. (And, yes, I confirmed that with both Mike Gills and the Level 5 judges while at PT Austin.)
Bummer, because the Relentless Rats deck might have worked.
Baneslayer is in either UW control or Esper control. Uncertain.
I know - problem is that I have a couple demands on my time...
I did go through an correct a bunch of those, but I suspect that in my rush to leave for the PTQ, I simply closed the window pre save. Sorry.
well - the 10 fetchlands are the first conflict. Jund gets first crack at the Verdant Crossroads.
The other downside is that BDM's version has no removal or access to a sweeper. It also has very little answers to planeswalkers etc. Just SGC
Not impossible - have to see.
Are you sure this is correct? I'm pretty sure you're allowed as many as you like in standard, although I don't know how this challenge was worded. Did it say "4 of each standard legal card (except basic lands)", or did it say "within deck building constraints for a standard deck" or words to that effect?
Either way, it probably wants a lot of the support cards from the vampires deck, surely?
Thanks Paul
Guess I will
Not sure how it will turn out yet thinking about something like ... hi this is me, the deck and why i choose it, then run it through a few games and then look to improve it and run it through a few more.
That was a remnant from an earlier version.
It's not an amazing deck, but something like the valakut "combo" deck could maybe fill the hole better than the strange enchantress thing? I don't have a list off the top of my head, but it's something like:
4 valakut, the molten pinnacle
4 expedition map
4 terramorphic expanse
4 r/g panorama's
~2 forest
~15 mountain
4 harrow
4 rampant growth
4 kh expedition
4 earthquake
4 fireball
4 borderland ranger
4 elvish visionary
some other stuff
The sideboard has hellkites and some other random stuff.
The basic idea is just to stall while you get valakut and 1 forest, then play a million acceleration spells to get loads of mountains, and valakut/burn them out. It does test a little better than it ssounds, and doesn't encroach much on the other decks that you've posted, so maybe could be worth consideration.
I'd also wonder about putting 1-2 platinum angel's in sideboards here and there. with the removal having to be spread out all over the place, there might be a few decks show up with no removal at all, allowing the ultimate mise? Just an idea..
Wow, thanks for putting my deck on here. You pretty much have the whole deck with one small change. Instead of Rolling Thunder, I use Rolling Earthquake from Masters Edition 3. This gives the deck a sweeper against everything except Horsemanship, (which I don't run into often.)
All this is being done in the HTML portion of the editor (the switch link is at the bottom of your article page right under the article text box.)
HTML is very simple and is plain text (meaning you don't need to know much "language" to get it.)
When Jamuraa's ap makes the html for you, you will notice that it puts all the cards it doesn't recognize in the other spells section. This maybe intended to be a feature but in fact isn't very useful. The way you fix this is copy and paste the whole thing into a text file and then rearrange the card names that are wrong and then move that to the HTML of your article.
it should like something like:
<strong>Creatures</strong><br />
<span style="font-size: 70%">0 cards</span><br /><br />
<strong>Other Spells</strong><br />
1 something<br />
1 something else<br />
1 somethings<br />
<span style="font-size: 70%">3 cards</span><br />
and you want it to look like:
<strong>Creatures</strong><br />
1 something else<br />
1 somethings<br />
<span style="font-size: 70%">2 cards</span><br /><br />
<strong>Other Spells</strong><br />
1 something<br />
<span style="font-size: 70%">1 cards</span><br />
Where the bold part is the code you moved.
Hope that is clear enough.
Also you can't make the links work automatically if they don't work on the site but you can add your own a tags with urls pointing to Gatherer with the correct card image.
For example:
Xira Arien, go to gatherer: http://gatherer.wizards.com/
type in the name: Xira Arien
right click on the picture and click Properties and you see the following url to the image:
'http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=201208&type=card'
Notice the only thing that changes here is the multiverseid attribute, so when you look up cards as long as your url is formed as above you can just insert the new id# in the place of the old one and viola you have a source for an IMG or A tag.
Here is my thought on writing an article: Do it. If you decide you don't want to publish it don't but write it and see how you feel afterward. It is possible you will have something interesting to contribute. Even if you feel your ability isn't great someone else may garner pearls from your effort.
Quote "I've tried to be objective but I'm disappointed after this. I hold no ill will with people playing whatever deck they want, but I wish a deck that follows the intent of the format would win."
I have tried :( and I think on week three if I had not played the Arena (in the second game in the final) and kept my Mana open and played a mortify in response to the equipment being played it might have been a different outcome.... so my really bad play did not help..
That is not a say he was not holding another wizard.
The Vampires looking good though similar to what Flip played this week i think
Do have a question though why not 4 Dark Depths?
and the really good news ... the Allies (hmm should that be Ally's) have been born and so far they rock in fact it the most fun and competitive deck I have ever made for 20tiks (maybe even less not sure on the prices of the rare Dual lands), which i am thinking about writing an article on, but if any of you regular guys are working on one let me know as I wont, I not written a magic article in a long time so would prefer to leave it to the pros but i am willing if no ones minds.
This sure is a fine idea (the PRE I mean), and I finally found myself a nice deck to play. But the real problem will be testing it. After all, I don't think that anyone would join my Classic game advertised as "!!!MED BLOCK ONLY!!!". And besides it isn't a nice and friendly casual deck so Casual Room isn't an option. And as I said, no one in the TP Room would join my MED Block only game.
I'll see what I can do and maybe I'll join without any serious practice (after all the tourney is free right?). When is this event going to happen by the way?
LE
goblins could do well?
4x goblin guide
4x warren instigator
4x siege-gang commander
4x dragon fodder
4x goblin chieftain
4x goblin bushwhacker
2x goblin ruinblaster
4x goblin shortcutter
4x burst lightning
2x banefire
2x spire barrage(?)
22 mountain
maybe..
since when was rats restricted to 10 in standard?
Relentless Rats is not spared the deck building requirements. You're allowed 10 in a Standard deck, one in an EDH deck, and only 4 among all decks in this challenge.
But if it worked, it would be an awesome suggestion.
And yet some of us enjoy them anyway so your vote is rather lonely.
When is the Masters Edition tournament happening? I've been playing an all-ME3 deck in the casual room that does ok, so I'm interested. Also, how strict will you be about the set each card comes from? Lightning bolt was in a Master's Edition, but could I use the M10 version?
You have verdand catacombs in the Enchantress deck and the Jund deck.
I thought someone would pull together a relentless rats deck because of the less impact it would have on the other decks. 23 swamps, 20 rats, 4 coat of arms, 4 Consume spirit (since tendrils is used), add in a couple of tutors and whatever removal you can fish up.
The rats deck using less resources frees up cards for the other decks.
RagMan
I petition for no more articles by cotton regarding vanguard. Its a dead format that generates no extra revenue for mtgotraders nor does it create any general excitement to further MtGO. The only benefit is to the writer who gets some credit probably to play some valid format.
Interesting! What were your thoughts about it at GenCon?
How was the competition level, were the events popular?