Painter decks are not showing up and I cant rightly agree that the reason is needle. For instance Epic Painter has various ways of removing or stopping a needle from entering play and imperial painter dosent much care about needle since on aveage only half its game wins are combo in nature. No the reason i believe there not showing up is the abundant amount of mono colred mana bases. In any given pe there will be 10-15 decks that run a very signifagant amount of basic lands. This stops moon effects. Further more Imperial is a straight up dog to rdw.
On to the article. I like the disolusion of top 10 and really enjoy multiple pictures in the decklists. ie flash and fish.
Cant wait to score a win so i have a list in there again.
Deck name: Save the Green Planet. The deck is based around getting a bunch of mana so as to utilize your buyback spells, big creatures, and broken fall + basilisk combo. The deck plays counterspells for turn 2 tempo plays/ to protect your creature or buyback spells. Contempt to keep your opponents guys off the board or to recycle your spikes.
This deck controls the ground with en-Kor management, defensive creatures and enchantments. Fliers are the win condition. Problem creatures are taken care of by enchantments and the decoys/hunters/Mind Games. The spell curve allows for action early while having multiple ways to use excess mana (Mind Games, Anoint and Conviction).
MTGO Name: Aleister
Colors: G/B
Name: Life and Death
Description: Your classic Mana Ramp Control deck complete with mana ramp, removal, finishers, and a few buyback spells for the late game. Why choose between the powers of Life and Death when you can have both?
The print run for revised edition alone is estimated at 500 million cards. That means that literally millions of copies of each and every dual were printed. I doubt we are close to that on MODO.
This deck focuses on the size of the critters more than their abilities. The goal is to have bigger beasts than your opponent and then - with the use of your unusual combat tricks - force them to fight "mano a mano". Your opponent should never know when his creatures will be blocked or have to block.
Most of our creatures are tough enough to satisfy Endangered Armodon and thus we should be pretty safe from Pyroclasm-style effects.
Again, I agree on the subject and think it's a fairly negative thing to end the sale of these sets, no matter how little the packs were selling or events firing. It costs them extremely little to keep the sets available.
As far as the article goes, I lose a lot of interest when you start talking about your personal collection. It seems more like a blog when I read about how you are trying to build your personal collection, and I come here to read articles, not personal blogs.
Email : hope.sanders@charter.net
mtgo accounts 2 different ones : starke blooddrunk / volrath envec
Name of this deck : Tortured burial
stronghold :
tortured existence x 2
foul imp x 2
cannibalize x 2
lab rats x 2
rapid rats x 2
mogg flunkies x 3
fling x 3
seething anger x 2
furnace spirit x 2
dungeon shade x 2
mogg bombers x 3
Tempest :
mogg fanatic x 2
blood frenzy x 2
dauthi marauder x 2
grave digger x 2
disturbed burial x 2
lightning elemental x 2
dauhti horror x 2
"If you enjoy drafting, then it's a fine way to acquire cards. However if you don't like drafting the format, it's another terrible way to acquire cards. You're far better off working a real job for a couple of hours even at minimum wage, and buying the cards you want."
I agree with that 100%. I loved drafting MVW, because I could literally "raredraft" 1/3 of my picks (commons and uncommons were valuable too) and come out ahead a reasonable amount of the time. People would pass me Fireblasts, Crypt Rats, Buried Alives, Goblin Bombs etc all day. If I wanted to, I could guarantee myself at least 10 tickets back, albeit with a terrible deck.
However, I liked the gameplay, more or less. The gameplay for MED2 is beyond awful. To put it in persepective, even if I were guaranteed a random dual for every MED2 sealed I did, but the stipulation was that I had to actually play out all 5+ rounds of Swiss, I wouldn't take it.
I stopped doing MVW because the queues became too diffucult. The same people would be in every draft and they knew not to pass money anymore, and my carefree attitude didn't allow me many wins.
They really need to put more time into the sets in regards to limited. It's a driving force behind how many overall packs are opened, and thus how much a lot of the cards in the set are worth.
I think o-ring could be good I personally never tested it but I played vs someone in the Tourney practice room who was running them and they seemed decent in bant.
In paper magic, the revised duals are not still being printed. Yet vintage and legacy formats continue to thrive. Why would mtgo and classic be any different?
Wow. The 16 player sealed swiss queues are amazing.
The distribution goes like this: (in terms of packs won)
4-0 15
3-1 10
3-1 10
3-1 10
3-1 10
2-2 2
2-2 2
2-2 2
2-2 2
2-2 2
2-2 2
1-3 0
1-3 0
1-3 0
0-3 0
0-4 0
That is 67 won packs
The input is 96 packs +32 tix (or 104 equiv. packs)
That is a 64% return, which is over 20% higher than a normal draft/8 man sealed.
Might I make a suggestion, remove the 2 Leechridden Swamps and put in 2 normal swamps.
It doesn't seem as though the Leechridden Swamps were terribly useful with their ability and so are only a deadweight coming into play tapped.
I dont know what youd call it and I just wanted to type in for food for thought. My very 1st MED2 draft 1st pack was Foil Tundra, taiga....man that sucked passing a taiga.
Well... You are probably right that no one will pass a foil Sea, But way back in 7th I got passed a Foil Birds of Paradise and literally fell out of my chair!
I find drafting a great way to go during release week to fill sets, I consistantly win first game and pull stuff i want or need. Duals i think i pulled 8 or 9 from draft that i kept and 2-3 that i traded for others i needed. Other rares and uncommons I needed I pulled helm, necro, what not. The only rare from med2 I bought was my last three necros and then later i ended up pulling two more out of draft. I will say it goes in streaks. Last four med2 drafts I pulled utter crap, other than one luck pick i ran across a demonic consultation foil, which i promptly traded for two sea drakes and tickets. I would say from personal experience drafting to fill your play sets works best during release weeks. Drafts fire more, lots of less skilled players to keep you winning rounds. This of course is dependent on you winning your first round consistantly. If you can not win the first round its cheaper to just buy what you want.
Thank you for those suggestions, I know that mono-black decks are about hurting yourself to hurt your opponent. I usually always go mon0o-black despite the current meta game, its just my thing. I guess you can say I am a Conservative Liberal as far as my playstyle goes.
People paying 10 tix for a conflux rare should really learn some patience. The chase rares will drop to 3-4 tix during the release events, maybe less. At 15 tix, Bolas might well be a steal though, as he is certainly the most desirable card in the set, and the only planeswalker to boot.
unfortunatly, i cannot help you more about foil distribution (i really dont know)
"In general, I think foil rares are like lottery tickets. People buy lottery tickets on hope, not rational expectation. Aside from some badly designed lotteries, the odds for winning are far worse than not playing, unless you get randomly lucky. That's all foil duals are - a nice treat if you are randomly lucky."
i agree 300% !!! We have common opinion about that.
That makes of ME2 the biggest and the most valuable lottery of MTGO and simultaneously, the lottery where the probabilities to win are the highest ....
That being said, i could say : more you draft it, better you become in this draft, more packs you win => more chance to become "randomly lucky". And this is this phenomen i wanted to highlight in the reasonning.
As you well mentionned, it could be a more emotional than rational attraction, and this situation exists only on ME2.
You seem to have been unlucky until today in ME2 draft (i wish you it'd change). it appears that my experience was closer to Rasparthe's experience ... i won a lot thank to ME2, so i am considering myself as lucky.
PS : once we got the distribution rules, it would be interesting to calculate the expecting ROI to draft ME2 until drawing foild dual...
I did look at foil prices, but they fluctuate, and I am not sure of the frequency of foils or foil distribution. The best I could do was "the value of the foils has to be at least $90 to break even."
Not that the MTGOTraders sell price is the absolute tops - selling to a dealer, you are likely to get far less (closer to half). Even if you are purchasing, you can generally get a discount. For february, MTGOTraders is offering a 16% disount on orders of $100 or more, so that foil Underground Sea would retail for just (just!) $197.
The expected value of the big ticket cards is tricky. Expected value is the price times the odds of getting it. That depends on two variables I don't know: how often do foils appear? what's the relative distribution of foil rares to foil commons?
Here's the best case scenario: a foil every six packs, and the odds are equal that it could be any card in MEDII. In that case, the odds of opening a Foil Underground Sea (or any other Foil card) are 6*245, or 1 in 1,470, or 1 in 290 for any given draft. (I'm ignoring the chane of getting one pick two - no one is going to pass a foil Underground Sea.) Under these assumptions, the expected value of a Foil Underground Sea is $197/290, or about $0.68 Summing the retail prices for the 6 foils you listed, the sum of expected values is $2.56. That's significant - if the assumptions are valid.
Worst case scenario: a foil every ten packs, and Wizards keeps the common, uncommon, rare ratios. Then the odds are 3 in 10 (packs per foil) * (80 rares + 3* 80 uncommons + 11 * 80 commons), or 1 in 4,000. In that case, the expected value of the Underground Sea would be about five cents. The expected value of all six, combined, is $0.18. Not enough to change the outcome.
I suspect the odds of cracking and Underground Sea are somewhere in that range, but closer tothe first scenario. However, I don't think it is high enough to influence my analysis.
In general, I think foil rares are like lottery tickets. People buy lottery tickets on hope, not rational expectation. Aside from some badly designed lotteries, the odds for winning are far worse than not playing, unless you get randomly lucky. That's all foil duals are - a nice treat if you are randomly lucky.
Or maybe I'm just bitter. Looking over my history, it looks like I have drafted MEDII (or played MEDII sealed) maybe 30 times. That's around 90 packs. I have never opened a normal Underground Sea, much less a foil one. For that matter, I have not yet opened a foil rare at all, to my knowledge. (I opened, and passed, Jester's Mask in two straight drafts last night, so maybe my bad luck means someone else has good luck, to compensate.)
As far as calculating the payback of drafts into costs - you had better be good. I think I have a halfway decent knowledge of this format, and my rating was 1757 going into last night. I drafted twice, got beat in the first round both times, and *I was the second lowest rated drafter in both drafts.* It's not so easy to win MEDII drafts any more.
The expected value of a pack, which is equal to mean value, will never exceed the cost of a pack for any amount of time. It's theoretically possible that this can happen briefly -- thinking of Jitte in the rat deck. But the product is bought out from every location, and becomes unavailable -- if the supply of that kind of pack meets the demand, the price of the chase cards will drop until the expected value of the pack drops to its actual cost.
If you are a gambler, you can open packs hoping to get something valuable, but opening packs to try to get ahead is like scratch off tickets. In the long run, you won't ever come out ahead.
If you enjoy drafting, then it's a fine way to acquire cards. However if you don't like drafting the format, it's another terrible way to acquire cards. You're far better off working a real job for a couple of hours even at minimum wage, and buying the cards you want.
I'm not sure I follow your second point entirely regarding dual lands and attrition. I think the reason that the mirage block cards are harder to get is because mirage block in general is an extremely unbalanced set for limited. Weatherlight, in my opinion, makes for a truly horrible draft set. The fewer the number of people that play it, the less packs are opened. As you pointed out, when there are less cards that are good in a set, then the one or two that are good inherit all the value. Vampiric tutor is a really good example of that. I think MED2 was better, and more enjoyable for limited than ME1 was. It's still not polished like modern sets, but hopefully ME3 + 4 are fun to play also.
Painter decks are not showing up and I cant rightly agree that the reason is needle. For instance Epic Painter has various ways of removing or stopping a needle from entering play and imperial painter dosent much care about needle since on aveage only half its game wins are combo in nature. No the reason i believe there not showing up is the abundant amount of mono colred mana bases. In any given pe there will be 10-15 decks that run a very signifagant amount of basic lands. This stops moon effects. Further more Imperial is a straight up dog to rdw.
On to the article. I like the disolusion of top 10 and really enjoy multiple pictures in the decklists. ie flash and fish.
Cant wait to score a win so i have a list in there again.
Deck name: Save the Green Planet. The deck is based around getting a bunch of mana so as to utilize your buyback spells, big creatures, and broken fall + basilisk combo. The deck plays counterspells for turn 2 tempo plays/ to protect your creature or buyback spells. Contempt to keep your opponents guys off the board or to recycle your spikes.
2 Skyshroud Ranger (Tempest)
3 Lowland Basilisk
2 Spike Worker
2 Spike Colony
1 Spined Wurm
2 Rootbreaker Wurm (Tempest)
2 Powersink (Tempest)
2 Mana Leak
1 Counterspell (Tempest)
2 Provoke
1 Elvish Fury (Tempest)
2 Capsize (Tempest)
2 Mindgames
3 Rampant Growth (Tempest)
2 Sift
2 Contempt
2 Broken Fall (Tempest)
3 Overgrowth
14 Forest
10 Islands
Thank you.
KingZan on MTGO
MTGO User Name: First_Strike
This deck controls the ground with en-Kor management, defensive creatures and enchantments. Fliers are the win condition. Problem creatures are taken care of by enchantments and the decoys/hunters/Mind Games. The spell curve allows for action early while having multiple ways to use excess mana (Mind Games, Anoint and Conviction).
22 Creatures:
3x Spirit en-Kor
3x Nomads en-Kor
2x Skyshroud Falcon
2x Venerable Monk
2x Master Decoy
2x Cloud Spirit
2x Rootwater Hunter
2x Horned Turtle
2x Spindrift Drake
1x Dream Prowler
1x Manakin
15 Spells:
3x Smite
2x Anoint
2x Conviction
2x Gaseous Form
2x Mana Leak
1x Pacifism
1x Disenchant
1x Mind Games
1x Sift
23 Land:
13x Plains
10x Island
-----
Tempest: 13
Stronghold: 24
Basic Land: 23
MTGO Name: Aleister
Colors: G/B
Name: Life and Death
Description: Your classic Mana Ramp Control deck complete with mana ramp, removal, finishers, and a few buyback spells for the late game. Why choose between the powers of Life and Death when you can have both?
Lands:
12x Swamp
12x Forest
Creatures:
3x Endangered Armadon
2x Rootbreaker Wurm (Tempest)
2x Spined Wurm
2x Lowland Basilisk
2x Spike Colony
2x Skyshroud Trooper
Noncreature:
2x Evincar's Justice (Tempest)
2x Coercion (Tempest)
2x Respite (Tempest)
3x Overgrowth
3x Rampant Growth (Tempest)
1x Disturbed Burial (Tempest)
1x Lab Rats
2x Dark Banishing (Tempest)
2x Death Stroke
2x Cannibalize
1x Diabolic Edict (Tempest)
1x Brush with Death
1x Natural Spring
The print run for revised edition alone is estimated at 500 million cards. That means that literally millions of copies of each and every dual were printed. I doubt we are close to that on MODO.
source: crystalkeep.com/magic/products/revised
Working Title: Size Matters
Colors: G/U
Main Deck (60)
land (24):
12 Forest
12 Island
creatures (25):
2 Tidal Warrior
2 Spike Drone (TP)
2 Canopy Spider (TP)
3 Hammerhead Shark
2 Horned Turtle (TP)
2 Lowland Basilisk
2 Trained Armodon (TP)
1 Skyshroud Troopers
2 Skyshroud Troll (TP)
3 Endangered Armodon
2 Spined Wurm
1 Spike Colony
1 Sea Monster (TP)
other spells (11):
2 Elvish Fury (TP)
1 Shadow Rift (TP)
2 Leap
1 Crossbow Ambush
3 Provoke
2 Mana Leak
- - -
This deck focuses on the size of the critters more than their abilities. The goal is to have bigger beasts than your opponent and then - with the use of your unusual combat tricks - force them to fight "mano a mano". Your opponent should never know when his creatures will be blocked or have to block.
Most of our creatures are tough enough to satisfy Endangered Armodon and thus we should be pretty safe from Pyroclasm-style effects.
Again, I agree on the subject and think it's a fairly negative thing to end the sale of these sets, no matter how little the packs were selling or events firing. It costs them extremely little to keep the sets available.
As far as the article goes, I lose a lot of interest when you start talking about your personal collection. It seems more like a blog when I read about how you are trying to build your personal collection, and I come here to read articles, not personal blogs.
G/U
Land, Air, and Sea
3 Cloud Spirit
1 Dream Prowler
2 Hammerhead Shark
1 Lowland Basilisk
1 Skyshroud Troopers
1 Spike Colony
2 Skyshroud Troopers
2 Spike Worker
2 Skyshroud Archer
3 Tidal Warrior
2 Spindrift Drake
2 Leap
2 Contempt
2 Mana Leak
2 Mind Games
1 Mulch
1 Overgrowth
2 Provoke
From a previous set:
2 Sea Monster
1 Rootbreaker Wurm
1 Rootwater Hunter
12 Island
12 Forest
Email : hope.sanders@charter.net
mtgo accounts 2 different ones : starke blooddrunk / volrath envec
Name of this deck : Tortured burial
stronghold :
tortured existence x 2
foul imp x 2
cannibalize x 2
lab rats x 2
rapid rats x 2
mogg flunkies x 3
fling x 3
seething anger x 2
furnace spirit x 2
dungeon shade x 2
mogg bombers x 3
Tempest :
mogg fanatic x 2
blood frenzy x 2
dauthi marauder x 2
grave digger x 2
disturbed burial x 2
lightning elemental x 2
dauhti horror x 2
Mana / Land :
mountain x 11
swamp x 10
"If you enjoy drafting, then it's a fine way to acquire cards. However if you don't like drafting the format, it's another terrible way to acquire cards. You're far better off working a real job for a couple of hours even at minimum wage, and buying the cards you want."
I agree with that 100%. I loved drafting MVW, because I could literally "raredraft" 1/3 of my picks (commons and uncommons were valuable too) and come out ahead a reasonable amount of the time. People would pass me Fireblasts, Crypt Rats, Buried Alives, Goblin Bombs etc all day. If I wanted to, I could guarantee myself at least 10 tickets back, albeit with a terrible deck.
However, I liked the gameplay, more or less. The gameplay for MED2 is beyond awful. To put it in persepective, even if I were guaranteed a random dual for every MED2 sealed I did, but the stipulation was that I had to actually play out all 5+ rounds of Swiss, I wouldn't take it.
I stopped doing MVW because the queues became too diffucult. The same people would be in every draft and they knew not to pass money anymore, and my carefree attitude didn't allow me many wins.
They really need to put more time into the sets in regards to limited. It's a driving force behind how many overall packs are opened, and thus how much a lot of the cards in the set are worth.
I think o-ring could be good I personally never tested it but I played vs someone in the Tourney practice room who was running them and they seemed decent in bant.
In paper magic, the revised duals are not still being printed. Yet vintage and legacy formats continue to thrive. Why would mtgo and classic be any different?
Er, the 8 man is actually only 7 percent less at 57% with the new payout, but draft is still pretty terrible (12 packs won for 28? Blearrgh).
Wow. The 16 player sealed swiss queues are amazing.
The distribution goes like this: (in terms of packs won)
4-0 15
3-1 10
3-1 10
3-1 10
3-1 10
2-2 2
2-2 2
2-2 2
2-2 2
2-2 2
2-2 2
1-3 0
1-3 0
1-3 0
0-3 0
0-4 0
That is 67 won packs
The input is 96 packs +32 tix (or 104 equiv. packs)
That is a 64% return, which is over 20% higher than a normal draft/8 man sealed.
Might I make a suggestion, remove the 2 Leechridden Swamps and put in 2 normal swamps.
It doesn't seem as though the Leechridden Swamps were terribly useful with their ability and so are only a deadweight coming into play tapped.
Poor you =)
I dont know what youd call it and I just wanted to type in for food for thought. My very 1st MED2 draft 1st pack was Foil Tundra, taiga....man that sucked passing a taiga.
"no one is going to pass a foil Underground Sea."
Well... You are probably right that no one will pass a foil Sea, But way back in 7th I got passed a Foil Birds of Paradise and literally fell out of my chair!
I find drafting a great way to go during release week to fill sets, I consistantly win first game and pull stuff i want or need. Duals i think i pulled 8 or 9 from draft that i kept and 2-3 that i traded for others i needed. Other rares and uncommons I needed I pulled helm, necro, what not. The only rare from med2 I bought was my last three necros and then later i ended up pulling two more out of draft. I will say it goes in streaks. Last four med2 drafts I pulled utter crap, other than one luck pick i ran across a demonic consultation foil, which i promptly traded for two sea drakes and tickets. I would say from personal experience drafting to fill your play sets works best during release weeks. Drafts fire more, lots of less skilled players to keep you winning rounds. This of course is dependent on you winning your first round consistantly. If you can not win the first round its cheaper to just buy what you want.
Thank you for those suggestions, I know that mono-black decks are about hurting yourself to hurt your opponent. I usually always go mon0o-black despite the current meta game, its just my thing. I guess you can say I am a Conservative Liberal as far as my playstyle goes.
People paying 10 tix for a conflux rare should really learn some patience. The chase rares will drop to 3-4 tix during the release events, maybe less. At 15 tix, Bolas might well be a steal though, as he is certainly the most desirable card in the set, and the only planeswalker to boot.
Tezz is in there twice..just fyi :)
unfortunatly, i cannot help you more about foil distribution (i really dont know)
"In general, I think foil rares are like lottery tickets. People buy lottery tickets on hope, not rational expectation. Aside from some badly designed lotteries, the odds for winning are far worse than not playing, unless you get randomly lucky. That's all foil duals are - a nice treat if you are randomly lucky."
i agree 300% !!! We have common opinion about that.
That makes of ME2 the biggest and the most valuable lottery of MTGO and simultaneously, the lottery where the probabilities to win are the highest ....
That being said, i could say : more you draft it, better you become in this draft, more packs you win => more chance to become "randomly lucky". And this is this phenomen i wanted to highlight in the reasonning.
As you well mentionned, it could be a more emotional than rational attraction, and this situation exists only on ME2.
You seem to have been unlucky until today in ME2 draft (i wish you it'd change). it appears that my experience was closer to Rasparthe's experience ... i won a lot thank to ME2, so i am considering myself as lucky.
PS : once we got the distribution rules, it would be interesting to calculate the expecting ROI to draft ME2 until drawing foild dual...
I did look at foil prices, but they fluctuate, and I am not sure of the frequency of foils or foil distribution. The best I could do was "the value of the foils has to be at least $90 to break even."
Not that the MTGOTraders sell price is the absolute tops - selling to a dealer, you are likely to get far less (closer to half). Even if you are purchasing, you can generally get a discount. For february, MTGOTraders is offering a 16% disount on orders of $100 or more, so that foil Underground Sea would retail for just (just!) $197.
The expected value of the big ticket cards is tricky. Expected value is the price times the odds of getting it. That depends on two variables I don't know: how often do foils appear? what's the relative distribution of foil rares to foil commons?
Here's the best case scenario: a foil every six packs, and the odds are equal that it could be any card in MEDII. In that case, the odds of opening a Foil Underground Sea (or any other Foil card) are 6*245, or 1 in 1,470, or 1 in 290 for any given draft. (I'm ignoring the chane of getting one pick two - no one is going to pass a foil Underground Sea.) Under these assumptions, the expected value of a Foil Underground Sea is $197/290, or about $0.68 Summing the retail prices for the 6 foils you listed, the sum of expected values is $2.56. That's significant - if the assumptions are valid.
Worst case scenario: a foil every ten packs, and Wizards keeps the common, uncommon, rare ratios. Then the odds are 3 in 10 (packs per foil) * (80 rares + 3* 80 uncommons + 11 * 80 commons), or 1 in 4,000. In that case, the expected value of the Underground Sea would be about five cents. The expected value of all six, combined, is $0.18. Not enough to change the outcome.
I suspect the odds of cracking and Underground Sea are somewhere in that range, but closer tothe first scenario. However, I don't think it is high enough to influence my analysis.
In general, I think foil rares are like lottery tickets. People buy lottery tickets on hope, not rational expectation. Aside from some badly designed lotteries, the odds for winning are far worse than not playing, unless you get randomly lucky. That's all foil duals are - a nice treat if you are randomly lucky.
Or maybe I'm just bitter. Looking over my history, it looks like I have drafted MEDII (or played MEDII sealed) maybe 30 times. That's around 90 packs. I have never opened a normal Underground Sea, much less a foil one. For that matter, I have not yet opened a foil rare at all, to my knowledge. (I opened, and passed, Jester's Mask in two straight drafts last night, so maybe my bad luck means someone else has good luck, to compensate.)
As far as calculating the payback of drafts into costs - you had better be good. I think I have a halfway decent knowledge of this format, and my rating was 1757 going into last night. I drafted twice, got beat in the first round both times, and *I was the second lowest rated drafter in both drafts.* It's not so easy to win MEDII drafts any more.
The expected value of a pack, which is equal to mean value, will never exceed the cost of a pack for any amount of time. It's theoretically possible that this can happen briefly -- thinking of Jitte in the rat deck. But the product is bought out from every location, and becomes unavailable -- if the supply of that kind of pack meets the demand, the price of the chase cards will drop until the expected value of the pack drops to its actual cost.
If you are a gambler, you can open packs hoping to get something valuable, but opening packs to try to get ahead is like scratch off tickets. In the long run, you won't ever come out ahead.
If you enjoy drafting, then it's a fine way to acquire cards. However if you don't like drafting the format, it's another terrible way to acquire cards. You're far better off working a real job for a couple of hours even at minimum wage, and buying the cards you want.
I'm not sure I follow your second point entirely regarding dual lands and attrition. I think the reason that the mirage block cards are harder to get is because mirage block in general is an extremely unbalanced set for limited. Weatherlight, in my opinion, makes for a truly horrible draft set. The fewer the number of people that play it, the less packs are opened. As you pointed out, when there are less cards that are good in a set, then the one or two that are good inherit all the value. Vampiric tutor is a really good example of that. I think MED2 was better, and more enjoyable for limited than ME1 was. It's still not polished like modern sets, but hopefully ME3 + 4 are fun to play also.