I would also strongly encourage everyone to check out Reddit's thread, as well as other articles here on PureMTGO for deeper knowledge.
I probably didn't put my ideas as clearly as I should've, but I wanted to say that we should worry about EV (and payout) changes more than about the introduction of Play Points. I accept it that Play Points are less valuable because of lost flexibility, but, if you're not quitting MTGO, it's not like they become worthless. People are going to play events on MTGO, which means PPs will always be needed. It sucks that you cannot build a new deck with your PPs, but if you're building your deck from your last resources, it is likely that you will need to buy tickets to join events afterwards anyway. In this case, you can just buy tickets first and use points to join. Also, stacking up points is going to come up only for people with very high win percentages. They will still have occasional high-level Constructed event to spend their points on AND it's not like registering to Sealed is equal to cracking packs. Some may not like Limited, but playing in an event definitely has some extra value. You still can build your collection through Events, because part of the winnings is paid out in tradeable packs, and, once again, if "building collection" means using every ticket won to get cards, then you'll still need something to pay for your next event.
I'm running UW Control in Standard right now and you read my mind! I'm currently playing one Hallowed Moonlight in the main, and two more in the Sideboard. It might be overkill, but we're not going to have a better picture of Standard until after the Pro Tour, and HM can wreck alot of strategies.
Lee Sharpe has responded to the feedback. He posted on the official site:
"We've spent a lot of time this week reading feedback and reactions to these changes, so thanks everyone. Much of feedback indicated that the 12-ticket entry point for Daily Events made the events less accessible to newer players or other players who weren’t looking to compete in Magic Online's highest level of regularly available competition. This is what I meant when I said it was increasing to "help distance [the Daily Event] from the eight-player queues." We expect some players will now spend time they would previously have spent in Daily Events in eight-player queues, and we don't see that as a bad thing.
Where this may be a bad thing is if you are a Legacy, Vintage, or Pauper player, because we don't run the eight-player queues for these formats. We agree that some of the new structures could potentially underserve those players, therefore we are removing Daily Events for these formats only and replacing them with events that are "between" the eight-player queues and Daily Events that remain as announced for the Standard and Modern formats. You can see the details of those new events above. We feel these events will do a good job of meeting the needs of our customers who enjoy Legacy, Vintage, and Pauper and as always we will continue to adjust our offerings based on player behavior and feedback.
Data shows that the player bases for these formats are smaller, so offering these at scheduled times makes it easier for players to gather, as opposed to a queue which requires a enough players to fire the queue to happen to show up at the same time."
"With that in mind, in this article I will assume that 10 Play Points are worth 1 Event Ticket under all circumstances."
...but they aren't, under any circumstance, worth that. I cannot turn PP into tix (without a significant time investment), I cannot turn PP into new cards for my constructed deck, I cannot turn PP into actual money if I need it. The only thing I can do with PP is play in more events, they are a gift certificate, not a currency--and they are very bad for all players. By accepting WotC's faulty logic that fun money is just as good as real money, you completely missed the point of what everyone was mad about in the first place, rendering much of this analysis moot. WotC is taking away the ability for players to decide for themselves what to do with their winnings (you may now ONLY play in more events), and that is huge. You can no longer reasonably expect to be able to build a collection by playing constructed, something that was the basis for many people's collection building in the past.
The Reddit thread where a lot of this came from has much better analysis of what this change actually means to players (basically if you are a semi-decent grinder or someone who drafts a lot, the change is okay for you, potentially even a bit beneficial. If you are a great grinder, someone who doesn't draft, or basically any other type of player it is terrible), I recommend everyone read that.
Sorry I meant Sulfur Elemental :( Bad autopilot typing there. If warrens bothers you, you could make it illnessor/dread + 1 engineered plague, goblins.
My insight here is another voice in the crowd. I don't like the changes, because they take away value from the MTGO experience. They do that by locking my prizes into future events and only future events. I play all formats. Sometimes I like to go down to zero tickets and speculate. Sometimes I accumulate 200 tickets grinding drafts/sealed in a set I really like through trading extra packs. Sometimes I put $100 in and see how many months I can keep going off of it.
Player points ruin many of those plans because they aren't liquid. I can't even trade them between my storage accounts, which is like throwing your money away every time you get a dime but not a dollar.
My own theory is whenever they put out a new version of MTGO, they realize their servers can't handle heavy traffic so they decide to make the less addicted, saner people quit by making prize cuts. When the servers are back up to snuff, they increase prizes. What this change is really telling me is 'server are unstable, don't play our game unless you want to spend a lot of money'. Well I like the game, but my tolerance in jumping through hoops is now exceeded. I also don't sell out, I take long breaks. Probably won't be writing another MTGO article in 2015 now.
And player points certainly make a goal like chasing MOCS more feasible for players like me. I will ha e to enter as many events as possible to obtain qualifying points. With a win rate of about 55% I at least break even in the process. I cant wait around for the next daily so more stability in payouts for 8 mans is good for me and may even cause themto fire more often.
What Wizards has really done here is taken half of your prize and automatically put it towards your next entry fee. Many people will not appreciate that. But many of us will be okay with it as long as they give a reasonable amount paid per win.
You know, I've never been a fan of Marsh Casualties which is why I don't bring it in against ANT, relying more on Golgari Charm. I'm probably going to replace it for Illness in the Ranks or Dread of Night because those are two cards I would probably bring in here. I also like that both are enchantments but I'm thinking Illness is a little better because it can also shut down Young Pyromancer.
Empty the Warrens isn't seeing any more play than usual. It's just something that ANT has that is really good against BUG Delver.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions!
Yeah, I think so too. I feel like Vintage and Legacy are the neglected children of the major formats.
I'm not sure that you absolutely need surgical, I just used to play it sometimes. I think BUG Delver is one of the best decks in the format, it has a good match-up against Miracles (at least it used to, IDK if Monastery Mentor makes it less favorable or not), which is the best control deck of the format.
Plus there is pressure, disruption, everything you could want.
Oh man, totally spaced that swarm flies. I still think it's not very good against us though just because of Lilliana and most of our spells to fight them are at sorcery speed. Surgical extraction is definitely worth considering. What should it replace?
And thank you for the comment. I'm going to make a lot more legacy content because you're right, legacy doesn't get the love it deserves. I might not be the absolute best person for it but it's a niche that I feel needs to be filled.
A combination of informative (yeah, right) and commercial. But IT'S RISK FREE or your money back!!!!
I honestly think it will be a matter of weeks not months until WotC raises the DE pay out. They're not going to fire at this structure and low profit off a DE is better than no profit.
"Regarding the recent Play Point introduction and Constructed event changes, you've told us that we have an opportunity to deliver a better play experience associated with the way we handle events, entries, and prizes. Because of that, these changes should be the first step in making "playing Magic" the easiest thing you do on Magic Online. As Lee alluded to in his article, not only would we love your feedback, but we will be hyper-vigilant in the coming months as we look at play patterns, retention rates, redemption, in-game economics, and many other core metrics to track actual customer behavior in the new system. We are of course open to making changes based on feedback and behavior when warranted.
I used to run Surgical Extraction in my sideboard as it blows out Reanimator quite often (it's happened to me). What I've done before is Thoughtseize discarding either Dark Ritual or Infernal Tutor and Extracting it, it makes it pretty hard for them to win at that point. If you have a clock at that time, you're set.
I love the Legacy content! We need more Legacy stuff, I know that I've been neglecting the format and I feel bad about it. It's only because Vintage gets almost nothing, and Legacy gets at least some in other places.
I hate to be that dude, but Xantid Swarm flies... The only way ol' Goyfy is gonna eat them is if they block or you side in spidersilk armor. :)
Damn, YouTube fixed the problem of videos stuck at 95% processing, but still playable, and as a consequence all those videos are now broken! (Some in past installments, too). I'll see what I can do to fix them without changing the address.
I am not a huge fan of the rhetoric the honchos at WOTC use regularly but of course they have to say what they say. Jobs being what they are in corporate America. And I am sure there are grains of truth in there somewhere despite the obvious to us phony baloney spread thickly throughout.
One of the things I keep coming back to is this disconnect between player expectations and what WOTC says/does. I remember when Hasbro bought WOTC there was a lot of fear mongering about how terrible this move was. The wonderful cottage industry boostrappers were selling out to the soulless machine corp and soon our favorite games were going to be wrecked.
And that didn't happen (nor did the sane among us really expect it to) but there is an aspect of fear that lingers with each terrible change that is made. And I remember after m2010 rules were announced in response to the outcries there was a comment made by a head honcho something along the lines of: We like to shake things up and keep the game unpredictable. This reaction you had is precisely what we want.
Those are not the exact words but they are pretty close. And it may be a key to solving or deciphering the communications gap between "Us" and "Them". In some ways we are an experiment to those who make the decisions. They don't know for sure how we will react to any given change. And they have missions that sometimes conflict with each other. Provide "Us" with good entertainment value and also keep making a profit. And not merely a steady profit but because of corporate culture the profit needs to keep rising.
So in this tension between giving us what we want and getting what they want and given the nature of our mutually mysterious relationship they try stuff. Sometimes it is outrageous sometimes wonderful, and a lot of the time nothing much to write home about.
They do magic very well. Almost everyone agrees in general about this. BUT they do things in the game that upset certain amounts of players each time there is an opportunity to make change. So even there some might complain that they don't do it THAT well. Except we know from history that as groups think, no one person can please everyone all the time.
So a certain level of dissatisfaction is not only guaranteed but accounted for. Do they have groups of analysts trying to figure out how we will respond to each change? Probably not. But none of these guys and gals are stupid (as far as I know.) They surely discuss these things among themselves and decide what they can tolerate and what is a genuine emergency.
A pro player revolt is probably a major problem for them. A bunch of players on MTGO getting up in arms? Probably not as much. Not to say we don't count at all but seriously have you listened to the amount of noise made vs actual signals sent among the online crowd? It is enough to make a WOTC employee just want to tune it all out. I am not saying that is the right attitude but I understand it.
That's one reason I try to temper my responses despite my emotional turmoil. I'd much rather be signal than noise.
Of course they have to think about their profits. But if a decision greatly displeases the players, it will end up hurting them as well. They keep taking away from us and we keep playing because magic is a great game and MTGO, despite all its flaws, is a great way to play that game anytime, anywhere. But there's always a point where what they they from us is big enough that many are willing to greatly reduce their playing time or even quit.
I don't think they made these decisions because they wanted to hurt players but it was pretty obvious that replacing prizes with untradable stuff, while doubling DEs entry fees and barely increasing the prizes, would cause these reactions. They either thought the reactions wouldn't be this bad or they just didn't care and expect these to increase their profits despite the reduction of players.
Most of their decisions are short sighted and I believe that has costed them as much as it has costed the players. If they finally started working on a good client, by hiring an actual game company, it would cost them, that's for sure. But if they had done that for V3, it would have saved them money in the long run and they would have more players right now.
They keep hiring people who play Magic instead of hiring people that understand what they are doing. The Magic Online Economy Strike Force or whatever it was called didn't have a single economist! I'm not saying it should have been a team of 10 economist that have never played Magic, but at the very least there has to be one economist on the team.
EDIT: And let's not forget the announcement where Lee Sharp tries to pass these as good changes for the players. Do they really think we are that stupid? It looked like on of those things that are advertised on TVs and you have to dial a number to order it (I don't know how they're called in English) but they sell stuff like that thing that is supposed to work your abs without exercising. It's basically the same when they said they want the DEs to feel special and when they claim the 2mans are pretty good (poker sites offer better EV on 1vs1 tournaments and it doesn't even require you to buy a deck).
I think your calculations are right. I'm not intimately familar with EV calculations, and forgot the the dailies are swiss, and thus you have to account for going 3-0 then 3-1, 2-0, then 3-1, 1-0 then 3-1, and 0-1 to 3-1. Thanks for pointing this out and sorry all for the error.
As for the first facebook comment - that's an interesting way to look at that, and a bit disheartening.
Humans? I count a Viashino, an Ogre, a Vampire, a cat and a bird, but I'm not seeing any Homo sapiens in that deck. That said, Obsidian Battle Axe and double striking warriors is way too much fun.
I came up with different numbers than you for win percentages needed to reenter continuously; I came up with about 54% as the breakeven point for the modern/standard dailies (with 3 ticket packs). My formula for calculating EV there was W^4*(6P+36)+4*W^3(1-W)(3P+18) where W is the winning percentage and P is the pack value. Quite possibly it's me who missed something there since I haven't done any formal math classes in a very long time. (I also came up with 56% for the new 8 mans and legacy/pauper/vintage dailies to play continuously).
Yea the tour will help give us a better idea but I feel like UW and UB can be in a very good position moving forward.
I would also strongly encourage everyone to check out Reddit's thread, as well as other articles here on PureMTGO for deeper knowledge.
I probably didn't put my ideas as clearly as I should've, but I wanted to say that we should worry about EV (and payout) changes more than about the introduction of Play Points. I accept it that Play Points are less valuable because of lost flexibility, but, if you're not quitting MTGO, it's not like they become worthless. People are going to play events on MTGO, which means PPs will always be needed. It sucks that you cannot build a new deck with your PPs, but if you're building your deck from your last resources, it is likely that you will need to buy tickets to join events afterwards anyway. In this case, you can just buy tickets first and use points to join. Also, stacking up points is going to come up only for people with very high win percentages. They will still have occasional high-level Constructed event to spend their points on AND it's not like registering to Sealed is equal to cracking packs. Some may not like Limited, but playing in an event definitely has some extra value. You still can build your collection through Events, because part of the winnings is paid out in tradeable packs, and, once again, if "building collection" means using every ticket won to get cards, then you'll still need something to pay for your next event.
I'm running UW Control in Standard right now and you read my mind! I'm currently playing one Hallowed Moonlight in the main, and two more in the Sideboard. It might be overkill, but we're not going to have a better picture of Standard until after the Pro Tour, and HM can wreck alot of strategies.
Lee Sharpe has responded to the feedback. He posted on the official site:
"We've spent a lot of time this week reading feedback and reactions to these changes, so thanks everyone. Much of feedback indicated that the 12-ticket entry point for Daily Events made the events less accessible to newer players or other players who weren’t looking to compete in Magic Online's highest level of regularly available competition. This is what I meant when I said it was increasing to "help distance [the Daily Event] from the eight-player queues." We expect some players will now spend time they would previously have spent in Daily Events in eight-player queues, and we don't see that as a bad thing.
Where this may be a bad thing is if you are a Legacy, Vintage, or Pauper player, because we don't run the eight-player queues for these formats. We agree that some of the new structures could potentially underserve those players, therefore we are removing Daily Events for these formats only and replacing them with events that are "between" the eight-player queues and Daily Events that remain as announced for the Standard and Modern formats. You can see the details of those new events above. We feel these events will do a good job of meeting the needs of our customers who enjoy Legacy, Vintage, and Pauper and as always we will continue to adjust our offerings based on player behavior and feedback.
Data shows that the player bases for these formats are smaller, so offering these at scheduled times makes it easier for players to gather, as opposed to a queue which requires a enough players to fire the queue to happen to show up at the same time."
Thanks for posting these cool creations. Looking forward for more.
increase soundcloud re-posts
"With that in mind, in this article I will assume that 10 Play Points are worth 1 Event Ticket under all circumstances."
...but they aren't, under any circumstance, worth that. I cannot turn PP into tix (without a significant time investment), I cannot turn PP into new cards for my constructed deck, I cannot turn PP into actual money if I need it. The only thing I can do with PP is play in more events, they are a gift certificate, not a currency--and they are very bad for all players. By accepting WotC's faulty logic that fun money is just as good as real money, you completely missed the point of what everyone was mad about in the first place, rendering much of this analysis moot. WotC is taking away the ability for players to decide for themselves what to do with their winnings (you may now ONLY play in more events), and that is huge. You can no longer reasonably expect to be able to build a collection by playing constructed, something that was the basis for many people's collection building in the past.
The Reddit thread where a lot of this came from has much better analysis of what this change actually means to players (basically if you are a semi-decent grinder or someone who drafts a lot, the change is okay for you, potentially even a bit beneficial. If you are a great grinder, someone who doesn't draft, or basically any other type of player it is terrible), I recommend everyone read that.
Sorry I meant Sulfur Elemental :( Bad autopilot typing there. If warrens bothers you, you could make it illnessor/dread + 1 engineered plague, goblins.
My insight here is another voice in the crowd. I don't like the changes, because they take away value from the MTGO experience. They do that by locking my prizes into future events and only future events. I play all formats. Sometimes I like to go down to zero tickets and speculate. Sometimes I accumulate 200 tickets grinding drafts/sealed in a set I really like through trading extra packs. Sometimes I put $100 in and see how many months I can keep going off of it.
Player points ruin many of those plans because they aren't liquid. I can't even trade them between my storage accounts, which is like throwing your money away every time you get a dime but not a dollar.
My own theory is whenever they put out a new version of MTGO, they realize their servers can't handle heavy traffic so they decide to make the less addicted, saner people quit by making prize cuts. When the servers are back up to snuff, they increase prizes. What this change is really telling me is 'server are unstable, don't play our game unless you want to spend a lot of money'. Well I like the game, but my tolerance in jumping through hoops is now exceeded. I also don't sell out, I take long breaks. Probably won't be writing another MTGO article in 2015 now.
And player points certainly make a goal like chasing MOCS more feasible for players like me. I will ha e to enter as many events as possible to obtain qualifying points. With a win rate of about 55% I at least break even in the process. I cant wait around for the next daily so more stability in payouts for 8 mans is good for me and may even cause themto fire more often.
What Wizards has really done here is taken half of your prize and automatically put it towards your next entry fee. Many people will not appreciate that. But many of us will be okay with it as long as they give a reasonable amount paid per win.
You know, I've never been a fan of Marsh Casualties which is why I don't bring it in against ANT, relying more on Golgari Charm. I'm probably going to replace it for Illness in the Ranks or Dread of Night because those are two cards I would probably bring in here. I also like that both are enchantments but I'm thinking Illness is a little better because it can also shut down Young Pyromancer.
Empty the Warrens isn't seeing any more play than usual. It's just something that ANT has that is really good against BUG Delver.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions!
Interstingly I've seen a few dread of night in sideboards of lists. And sulfuric vortex. Is Empty the Warrens really seeing an upsurge?
With Monastery Mentor and Empty the Warrens, Illness in the Ranks might be worth a couple of sidebaord slots
Yeah, I think so too. I feel like Vintage and Legacy are the neglected children of the major formats.
I'm not sure that you absolutely need surgical, I just used to play it sometimes. I think BUG Delver is one of the best decks in the format, it has a good match-up against Miracles (at least it used to, IDK if Monastery Mentor makes it less favorable or not), which is the best control deck of the format.
Plus there is pressure, disruption, everything you could want.
Oh man, totally spaced that swarm flies. I still think it's not very good against us though just because of Lilliana and most of our spells to fight them are at sorcery speed. Surgical extraction is definitely worth considering. What should it replace?
And thank you for the comment. I'm going to make a lot more legacy content because you're right, legacy doesn't get the love it deserves. I might not be the absolute best person for it but it's a niche that I feel needs to be filled.
A combination of informative (yeah, right) and commercial. But IT'S RISK FREE or your money back!!!!
I honestly think it will be a matter of weeks not months until WotC raises the DE pay out. They're not going to fire at this structure and low profit off a DE is better than no profit.
"Regarding the recent Play Point introduction and Constructed event changes, you've told us that we have an opportunity to deliver a better play experience associated with the way we handle events, entries, and prizes. Because of that, these changes should be the first step in making "playing Magic" the easiest thing you do on Magic Online. As Lee alluded to in his article, not only would we love your feedback, but we will be hyper-vigilant in the coming months as we look at play patterns, retention rates, redemption, in-game economics, and many other core metrics to track actual customer behavior in the new system. We are of course open to making changes based on feedback and behavior when warranted.
Thanks again.
Worth Wollpert
Director of Product—Magic Online"
I used to run Surgical Extraction in my sideboard as it blows out Reanimator quite often (it's happened to me). What I've done before is Thoughtseize discarding either Dark Ritual or Infernal Tutor and Extracting it, it makes it pretty hard for them to win at that point. If you have a clock at that time, you're set.
I love the Legacy content! We need more Legacy stuff, I know that I've been neglecting the format and I feel bad about it. It's only because Vintage gets almost nothing, and Legacy gets at least some in other places.
I hate to be that dude, but Xantid Swarm flies... The only way ol' Goyfy is gonna eat them is if they block or you side in spidersilk armor. :)
43.33 or 43⅓ is much clearer than 43+1/3PP
Damn, YouTube fixed the problem of videos stuck at 95% processing, but still playable, and as a consequence all those videos are now broken! (Some in past installments, too). I'll see what I can do to fix them without changing the address.
Abrollers? Something like that.
I am not a huge fan of the rhetoric the honchos at WOTC use regularly but of course they have to say what they say. Jobs being what they are in corporate America. And I am sure there are grains of truth in there somewhere despite the obvious to us phony baloney spread thickly throughout.
One of the things I keep coming back to is this disconnect between player expectations and what WOTC says/does. I remember when Hasbro bought WOTC there was a lot of fear mongering about how terrible this move was. The wonderful cottage industry boostrappers were selling out to the soulless machine corp and soon our favorite games were going to be wrecked.
And that didn't happen (nor did the sane among us really expect it to) but there is an aspect of fear that lingers with each terrible change that is made. And I remember after m2010 rules were announced in response to the outcries there was a comment made by a head honcho something along the lines of: We like to shake things up and keep the game unpredictable. This reaction you had is precisely what we want.
Those are not the exact words but they are pretty close. And it may be a key to solving or deciphering the communications gap between "Us" and "Them". In some ways we are an experiment to those who make the decisions. They don't know for sure how we will react to any given change. And they have missions that sometimes conflict with each other. Provide "Us" with good entertainment value and also keep making a profit. And not merely a steady profit but because of corporate culture the profit needs to keep rising.
So in this tension between giving us what we want and getting what they want and given the nature of our mutually mysterious relationship they try stuff. Sometimes it is outrageous sometimes wonderful, and a lot of the time nothing much to write home about.
They do magic very well. Almost everyone agrees in general about this. BUT they do things in the game that upset certain amounts of players each time there is an opportunity to make change. So even there some might complain that they don't do it THAT well. Except we know from history that as groups think, no one person can please everyone all the time.
So a certain level of dissatisfaction is not only guaranteed but accounted for. Do they have groups of analysts trying to figure out how we will respond to each change? Probably not. But none of these guys and gals are stupid (as far as I know.) They surely discuss these things among themselves and decide what they can tolerate and what is a genuine emergency.
A pro player revolt is probably a major problem for them. A bunch of players on MTGO getting up in arms? Probably not as much. Not to say we don't count at all but seriously have you listened to the amount of noise made vs actual signals sent among the online crowd? It is enough to make a WOTC employee just want to tune it all out. I am not saying that is the right attitude but I understand it.
That's one reason I try to temper my responses despite my emotional turmoil. I'd much rather be signal than noise.
Of course they have to think about their profits. But if a decision greatly displeases the players, it will end up hurting them as well. They keep taking away from us and we keep playing because magic is a great game and MTGO, despite all its flaws, is a great way to play that game anytime, anywhere. But there's always a point where what they they from us is big enough that many are willing to greatly reduce their playing time or even quit.
I don't think they made these decisions because they wanted to hurt players but it was pretty obvious that replacing prizes with untradable stuff, while doubling DEs entry fees and barely increasing the prizes, would cause these reactions. They either thought the reactions wouldn't be this bad or they just didn't care and expect these to increase their profits despite the reduction of players.
Most of their decisions are short sighted and I believe that has costed them as much as it has costed the players. If they finally started working on a good client, by hiring an actual game company, it would cost them, that's for sure. But if they had done that for V3, it would have saved them money in the long run and they would have more players right now.
They keep hiring people who play Magic instead of hiring people that understand what they are doing. The Magic Online Economy Strike Force or whatever it was called didn't have a single economist! I'm not saying it should have been a team of 10 economist that have never played Magic, but at the very least there has to be one economist on the team.
EDIT: And let's not forget the announcement where Lee Sharp tries to pass these as good changes for the players. Do they really think we are that stupid? It looked like on of those things that are advertised on TVs and you have to dial a number to order it (I don't know how they're called in English) but they sell stuff like that thing that is supposed to work your abs without exercising. It's basically the same when they said they want the DEs to feel special and when they claim the 2mans are pretty good (poker sites offer better EV on 1vs1 tournaments and it doesn't even require you to buy a deck).
No problem :)
I think your calculations are right. I'm not intimately familar with EV calculations, and forgot the the dailies are swiss, and thus you have to account for going 3-0 then 3-1, 2-0, then 3-1, 1-0 then 3-1, and 0-1 to 3-1. Thanks for pointing this out and sorry all for the error.
As for the first facebook comment - that's an interesting way to look at that, and a bit disheartening.
Humans? I count a Viashino, an Ogre, a Vampire, a cat and a bird, but I'm not seeing any Homo sapiens in that deck. That said, Obsidian Battle Axe and double striking warriors is way too much fun.
I came up with different numbers than you for win percentages needed to reenter continuously; I came up with about 54% as the breakeven point for the modern/standard dailies (with 3 ticket packs). My formula for calculating EV there was W^4*(6P+36)+4*W^3(1-W)(3P+18) where W is the winning percentage and P is the pack value. Quite possibly it's me who missed something there since I haven't done any formal math classes in a very long time. (I also came up with 56% for the new 8 mans and legacy/pauper/vintage dailies to play continuously).