If I lived in Europe or near the US coasts where they play paper legacy, I'd have dumped standard long ago. Rotations are just too much trouble, having a big enough card pool in Standard to be a deck brewer requires dumping large amounts of cash on cards that won't see eternal play, and yet standard remains bafflingly popular.
It's far worse in paper than online too, because changing decks is a logistical hassle in paper, at least online you can sell a deck to a bot (at better prices than the 33%-50% of retail a paper LGS will give you) and buy another deck in 15 minutes. Assembling a paper Standard deck is like trying to track down the pieces of evil DNA you need to create Serpentor, you can't get it all in any one place (unless you want to pay way too much), you're watching 20 eBay auctions at once, you spend 3 weeks doing it, and in the end you just run out of time and put Sgt. Slaughter in there because the tournament starts in 5 minutes. And what you end up with is stupid and obsolete by the time you get it finished anyhow.
That being said, my experience has been that you definitely can play rogue decks at the FNM level and have a decent shot, depending on the store's own peculiar metagame. Since you're in the big city now, I guess you can shop around a bit to find a store that's a good fit for you.
Yeah I agree entirely with your take on standard. Rogue decks aren't merely piles of cards that no one else thought to include in a list. "Hey these two cards have great synergy together, lets try them out!" They require knowledge of the gauntlet of Nonrogue decks. They also require knowledge of which of those decks are likely to be around. And tuning is an artform that not only includes the sideboard but also main deck tweaks.
All in all, I find people who claim to be rogue builders don't put all that much effort into the building beyond finding the cards they want to play with and putting them together. It isn't rocket science maybe but it is hard work. And then there is the practice to become good with your rogue deck against the field.
And also if a card has been overlooked repeatedly (over the entire course of a cycle's rotation) there is probably a reason why. Not that all these cards that don't make the big cut are bad but they are going to require more work perhaps than the pros want to put in. This means you have to be better at tuning with them than the big decks need.
And as you say, FNM isn't a PTQ or even a high rel tourney. Expect a few net decks no doubt but don't fear to bring something you homebrewed. As long as it has been tested and tuned it will probably do OK.
Standard is just as expensive as you want it to be (let that sink in for a moment).
If you find a $1500 decklist that you just have to play, that's your choice.
There are plenty of options out there that do not require a lot of money and are viable.
Remember, this is FNM and not the Pro Tour that I am talking about.
As for rogue decks not having a place in standard, that is just uninformed thinking there.
FNM is a great place to trot out a rogue deck and do well. The catch to any rogue deck is
that it has to be finely tuned and focused. Once you attend a few FNM's in the same place,
you learn what the metagame there will be like. That's when you get the chance to go rogue
and build something that has a chance to win.
My local store has a good crowd on Fridays and I know before I sit down with someone what
kind of deck they are likely to be playing. I know their style and I know their weaknesses.
That kind of information only comes by attending regularly and playing the game.
Don't miss out on Standard just because you are afraid it will wreck your budget.
The only way for a poor cardless n00b like me to "break into" paper Standard, and start out on the road to DCI points, is at the local FNM. That's the plan at this point.
I also plan to convince my new paper playgroup to join me in my quest.
Hopefully, one day in a few years you'll see a gimpy old scruffy homeless looking guy playing in a feature match at a Canadian GP. That'd be me.
I just can't play standard. I can't do it. The cards are expensive, the card pool is small, the interactions get out of control (ie, not many ways to hose your opponent). Moreover, in a very refined metagame, it seems rogue decks just don't have a place in standard. Either you play the most powerful cards or you don't. Well, count me out.
The post was mainly about the correctness of the math (and not so much that what he used it for). 400 *is* a better estimate of how many packs you need to open to get one of each Mythic than 120, which was the main point. I agree with you that I should have seen the 4 playsets.
Oh, you're right. I admit I don't play pauper much, but this seems to be quite absurd: why should we have an online format based on the rarity of online cards? The pool should be the same as the format's construction and premise entails. Plus, the promo rarity is fictitious (the distribution system of the promos has nothing to do with booster rarity), so when they mark them as "common" rather than "rare" is precisely to define them for the sake of formats that care about that. That Blue Elemental Blast is still unplayable looks like a bug to me.
"tl;dr: 400 packs to open one of each Mythic. 1600 packs to open 4 of each is too high. 720 might be too little. 900 seemes reasonable."
Except that his math is for 4 *playsets* ... which is 16 of each. That's how he got to 1920 (120 packs * 16).
If anything your more probabilistic math vs. Pete's perfectly even distribution illustratess the point even more that redemption is ridiculously efficient as obtaining singles for Vendors.
Pyroblast and Hydroblast are legal in MTGO pauper, but REB and BEB are not. On MTGO they were released as uncommons. There is a common promo for BEB but that seems not enough for it to be pauper legal.
I never get why people are so obsessed with Hydroblast and Pyroblast (which are $2.80 and $4.45, respectively) when you can just use Blue Elemental Blast and Red Elemental Blast ($0.10 and $1.68: seems like some players got wise about the latter at least, since the last time I checked). The only real difference is that you can cast Hydroblast and Pyroblast when you don't have a target. But why should you want to do that? The only reason that comes to mind is in a Storm deck, to increase the count, when you had sideboarded in a Pyro for protection but in the end you didn't need it while combo out. It's pretty thin as a reason already, but I can't think of anything else in the case of other decks, I really don't see color change shenanigans being done with them.
First of all; nice article, like always. Your math is wrong though in the following part:
"Well, let’s assume that a store is going to host an event, and wants to be able to sell singles. That store figures it needs four playsets of everything, over and above what it can buy from players in its store. In the past, the store would have to crack boosters to get those cards. Let’s use Return to Ravnica as an example. The set has 15 mythics and 53 rares. Using the estimate of one mythic per eight packs, you will need to open 120 packs to get one copy of each Mythic. 120 packs would have a bit over two sets of rares. Four playsets of everything means opening 1,920 packs. Assuming the store is paying something like $2.50, wholesale, for packs, that is a total cost of $4,700."
More precisely: "you will need to open 120 packs to get one copy of each Mythic. (...) Four playsets of everything means opening 1,920 packs. "
How did you get 1920?
120 is the number of packs you will need to open to get 1 specifick Mythic. You need more to get all. Say you have opened some number of packs and currently got 6 out of all 15 Mythics. Therefore, whenever you open a new Mythic you will have a probability of 9/15 to open a new (there are 9 Mythics left). Thus, you need to open 15/9 Mythics to get a new. In general with k<15 Mythics, you will need to open 15/(15-k) to get the next. If we do the sum (sum over 15/(15-k) for k=0 to 14) and multiply by 8 (for 8 packs to get one Mythic) we get that you need to open close to 400 packs (my calculations says 398.1874791874792 packs). You can then overapproximate (that is: the number I will give now is too high) to get a playset of all with 4*400=1600 - it is too high because most (220) of the packs to get one of each is spent on getting the last 3.
Doing the real calculation to get a playset of each Mythic is quite a lot of work and I am going to skip that. Instead I will give a estimate. Normally getting the last 3 Mythics (corresponding to sum over 15/(15-k) for k=12 to 14 times 8) took over half the packs (220 to be excat). By getting 12 distinct Mythics 4 times (each takes less than 180) takes less than 720 packs. You are now missing less than 12 cards (3*4). I do not know of a good way to find how many packs I need for that. I suspect 720 might be less (but a lot closer than 1600) than the right number of packs to open 4 of each Mythic. Since I think 720 (maybe too little) is a much better estimate than 1600 (this is surely too much) I will would guess that 900 is a good but proberly still too high estimate.
This halfs your number and ruins your point :/ (ecspecially when we take the cheaper prices - as mentioned by someone else above - on packs into account). Naturally you will also need to open the packs/sort the packs, which requires work and thus might tip the scale - on the other hand you will get waaaaay more cards than a playset of each card (as you said the rares takes alot less to get a playset of). I would think that it was still a quite good deal for a seller.
tl;dr: 400 packs to open one of each Mythic. 1600 packs to open 4 of each is too high. 720 might be too little. 900 seemes reasonable.
Great analysis on the effect on redemption. My thinking is that it will mostly affect the ebay cost of a set. As long as it is cheaper to get cards through redemption then people will continue to do it.
Here are some suggestions for Pauper cards you could include in the list:
Mogg Conscripts - $1.42
Mogg Raider - $1.90 - You don't have any goblins and these two are the most expensive
Cloudpost - $2.30 - An extremely important card now
Preordain - $0.15 - According to mtgo-stats this is found in 44% of all decks, the highest in pauper.
Hydroblast - $2.80 - According to mtgo-stats this is the second most highly used card in pauper (at least in sideboards).
Nettle Sentinel - $3.44 - A 4-of for every stompy deck
Standard Bearer - $2.87 - A popular sideboard option against pump spells
Armadillo Cloak (INV) - $3.68 - Used in the GW aura deck and has been a feature of pauper for a while.
Seat of the Synod (MRD) - $0.29 - Affinity is a cheap deck but this is the most expensive card in it,
Chittering Rats - $0.42 - 4-of for MBC
Nightscape Familiar - $1.40
Sunscape Familiar - $1.23 - Both are seen in Familiar storm decks which may be increasing in popularity after the bans.
One additional comment that I missed in the article. It's important to remember that Funeral Charm is an instant and so you can actually force your opponent to discard at instant speed. This means that if they have no cards in hand you can stop on their draw step and make them discard their card before they can play it, provided it can't be played at instant speed.
It's a play that I found very useful whilst running the deck.
Well Kuma sorry to be a dream crusher but as this was my first win with any deck I'm not too sorry, haha. Also, according to Gatherling your my biggest rival as I'm only 1-2 in matches against you, so you still have the upper hand there.
hi! Shambleshark really evolves my "landfall crab" deck, sience it already was UG. It´s defenetly not best tribal deck, crabs are crab, but it tryes hard and makes fun games.
The real problem is MTGO is an investment....you need to know that if you spend 2000$ on mtgo that one day you will be able to sell all your stuff for some amount of $. It may be $12 or $12,000 but you need to be able to get something for it. The redemption has been ok but awkward way to do this until now. I think what would be really good is for wizards to buy back tickets for $1. No shady pokerstars transactions...no back alley meetings where people could easily screw you over. Just buy my tickets back. There wouldnt be a bunch of cards leaving mtgo or entering paper...etc etc etc.....Make it easy for people to "Cash out"
You noted that tickets would be more scarce by the increase of supply of boosters which I agree would be true. However heavy redeemers are a significant part of demand for tickets. So if the market doesn't adjust and redeemers pull out of the market the demand of tickets would lower. Now this assumes that the market won't just adjust and that redeemers would pull out. It also doesn't take into affect that even though redeemers are demanding tickets they aren't pulling any tickets out of the system. So I was wondering what affect this change would have on the price of tickets.
They have also seemed to been pushing phantom events which lowers cards entering the system. Maybe they fell that the supply of cards are to high in the system already.
are always awesome and inspiring. My johnny-focus is on classic, commander, and tribal. I read all of your tribal stuff, and am probably gonna give you a shout out in my current article.
If I lived in Europe or near the US coasts where they play paper legacy, I'd have dumped standard long ago. Rotations are just too much trouble, having a big enough card pool in Standard to be a deck brewer requires dumping large amounts of cash on cards that won't see eternal play, and yet standard remains bafflingly popular.
It's far worse in paper than online too, because changing decks is a logistical hassle in paper, at least online you can sell a deck to a bot (at better prices than the 33%-50% of retail a paper LGS will give you) and buy another deck in 15 minutes. Assembling a paper Standard deck is like trying to track down the pieces of evil DNA you need to create Serpentor, you can't get it all in any one place (unless you want to pay way too much), you're watching 20 eBay auctions at once, you spend 3 weeks doing it, and in the end you just run out of time and put Sgt. Slaughter in there because the tournament starts in 5 minutes. And what you end up with is stupid and obsolete by the time you get it finished anyhow.
That being said, my experience has been that you definitely can play rogue decks at the FNM level and have a decent shot, depending on the store's own peculiar metagame. Since you're in the big city now, I guess you can shop around a bit to find a store that's a good fit for you.
Yeah I agree entirely with your take on standard. Rogue decks aren't merely piles of cards that no one else thought to include in a list. "Hey these two cards have great synergy together, lets try them out!" They require knowledge of the gauntlet of Nonrogue decks. They also require knowledge of which of those decks are likely to be around. And tuning is an artform that not only includes the sideboard but also main deck tweaks.
All in all, I find people who claim to be rogue builders don't put all that much effort into the building beyond finding the cards they want to play with and putting them together. It isn't rocket science maybe but it is hard work. And then there is the practice to become good with your rogue deck against the field.
And also if a card has been overlooked repeatedly (over the entire course of a cycle's rotation) there is probably a reason why. Not that all these cards that don't make the big cut are bad but they are going to require more work perhaps than the pros want to put in. This means you have to be better at tuning with them than the big decks need.
And as you say, FNM isn't a PTQ or even a high rel tourney. Expect a few net decks no doubt but don't fear to bring something you homebrewed. As long as it has been tested and tuned it will probably do OK.
Standard is just as expensive as you want it to be (let that sink in for a moment).
If you find a $1500 decklist that you just have to play, that's your choice.
There are plenty of options out there that do not require a lot of money and are viable.
Remember, this is FNM and not the Pro Tour that I am talking about.
As for rogue decks not having a place in standard, that is just uninformed thinking there.
FNM is a great place to trot out a rogue deck and do well. The catch to any rogue deck is
that it has to be finely tuned and focused. Once you attend a few FNM's in the same place,
you learn what the metagame there will be like. That's when you get the chance to go rogue
and build something that has a chance to win.
My local store has a good crowd on Fridays and I know before I sit down with someone what
kind of deck they are likely to be playing. I know their style and I know their weaknesses.
That kind of information only comes by attending regularly and playing the game.
Don't miss out on Standard just because you are afraid it will wreck your budget.
The only way for a poor cardless n00b like me to "break into" paper Standard, and start out on the road to DCI points, is at the local FNM. That's the plan at this point.
I also plan to convince my new paper playgroup to join me in my quest.
Hopefully, one day in a few years you'll see a gimpy old scruffy homeless looking guy playing in a feature match at a Canadian GP. That'd be me.
Feel free to not play Standard. Your call. :)
I just can't play standard. I can't do it. The cards are expensive, the card pool is small, the interactions get out of control (ie, not many ways to hose your opponent). Moreover, in a very refined metagame, it seems rogue decks just don't have a place in standard. Either you play the most powerful cards or you don't. Well, count me out.
Yes, I agree that I messed up with overlooking that 4 playsets part.
"This halfs your number and ruins your point :/ "
The point is not ruined at all. It is, in fact, even more poignant.
The post was mainly about the correctness of the math (and not so much that what he used it for). 400 *is* a better estimate of how many packs you need to open to get one of each Mythic than 120, which was the main point. I agree with you that I should have seen the 4 playsets.
Oh, you're right. I admit I don't play pauper much, but this seems to be quite absurd: why should we have an online format based on the rarity of online cards? The pool should be the same as the format's construction and premise entails. Plus, the promo rarity is fictitious (the distribution system of the promos has nothing to do with booster rarity), so when they mark them as "common" rather than "rare" is precisely to define them for the sake of formats that care about that. That Blue Elemental Blast is still unplayable looks like a bug to me.
"tl;dr: 400 packs to open one of each Mythic. 1600 packs to open 4 of each is too high. 720 might be too little. 900 seemes reasonable."
Except that his math is for 4 *playsets* ... which is 16 of each. That's how he got to 1920 (120 packs * 16).
If anything your more probabilistic math vs. Pete's perfectly even distribution illustratess the point even more that redemption is ridiculously efficient as obtaining singles for Vendors.
Pyroblast and Hydroblast are legal in MTGO pauper, but REB and BEB are not. On MTGO they were released as uncommons. There is a common promo for BEB but that seems not enough for it to be pauper legal.
I never get why people are so obsessed with Hydroblast and Pyroblast (which are $2.80 and $4.45, respectively) when you can just use Blue Elemental Blast and Red Elemental Blast ($0.10 and $1.68: seems like some players got wise about the latter at least, since the last time I checked). The only real difference is that you can cast Hydroblast and Pyroblast when you don't have a target. But why should you want to do that? The only reason that comes to mind is in a Storm deck, to increase the count, when you had sideboarded in a Pyro for protection but in the end you didn't need it while combo out. It's pretty thin as a reason already, but I can't think of anything else in the case of other decks, I really don't see color change shenanigans being done with them.
First of all; nice article, like always. Your math is wrong though in the following part:
"Well, let’s assume that a store is going to host an event, and wants to be able to sell singles. That store figures it needs four playsets of everything, over and above what it can buy from players in its store. In the past, the store would have to crack boosters to get those cards. Let’s use Return to Ravnica as an example. The set has 15 mythics and 53 rares. Using the estimate of one mythic per eight packs, you will need to open 120 packs to get one copy of each Mythic. 120 packs would have a bit over two sets of rares. Four playsets of everything means opening 1,920 packs. Assuming the store is paying something like $2.50, wholesale, for packs, that is a total cost of $4,700."
More precisely: "you will need to open 120 packs to get one copy of each Mythic. (...) Four playsets of everything means opening 1,920 packs. "
How did you get 1920?
120 is the number of packs you will need to open to get 1 specifick Mythic. You need more to get all. Say you have opened some number of packs and currently got 6 out of all 15 Mythics. Therefore, whenever you open a new Mythic you will have a probability of 9/15 to open a new (there are 9 Mythics left). Thus, you need to open 15/9 Mythics to get a new. In general with k<15 Mythics, you will need to open 15/(15-k) to get the next. If we do the sum (sum over 15/(15-k) for k=0 to 14) and multiply by 8 (for 8 packs to get one Mythic) we get that you need to open close to 400 packs (my calculations says 398.1874791874792 packs). You can then overapproximate (that is: the number I will give now is too high) to get a playset of all with 4*400=1600 - it is too high because most (220) of the packs to get one of each is spent on getting the last 3.
Doing the real calculation to get a playset of each Mythic is quite a lot of work and I am going to skip that. Instead I will give a estimate. Normally getting the last 3 Mythics (corresponding to sum over 15/(15-k) for k=12 to 14 times 8) took over half the packs (220 to be excat). By getting 12 distinct Mythics 4 times (each takes less than 180) takes less than 720 packs. You are now missing less than 12 cards (3*4). I do not know of a good way to find how many packs I need for that. I suspect 720 might be less (but a lot closer than 1600) than the right number of packs to open 4 of each Mythic. Since I think 720 (maybe too little) is a much better estimate than 1600 (this is surely too much) I will would guess that 900 is a good but proberly still too high estimate.
This halfs your number and ruins your point :/ (ecspecially when we take the cheaper prices - as mentioned by someone else above - on packs into account). Naturally you will also need to open the packs/sort the packs, which requires work and thus might tip the scale - on the other hand you will get waaaaay more cards than a playset of each card (as you said the rares takes alot less to get a playset of). I would think that it was still a quite good deal for a seller.
tl;dr: 400 packs to open one of each Mythic. 1600 packs to open 4 of each is too high. 720 might be too little. 900 seemes reasonable.
Great analysis on the effect on redemption. My thinking is that it will mostly affect the ebay cost of a set. As long as it is cheaper to get cards through redemption then people will continue to do it.
Here are some suggestions for Pauper cards you could include in the list:
Mogg Conscripts - $1.42
Mogg Raider - $1.90 - You don't have any goblins and these two are the most expensive
Cloudpost - $2.30 - An extremely important card now
Preordain - $0.15 - According to mtgo-stats this is found in 44% of all decks, the highest in pauper.
Hydroblast - $2.80 - According to mtgo-stats this is the second most highly used card in pauper (at least in sideboards).
Nettle Sentinel - $3.44 - A 4-of for every stompy deck
Standard Bearer - $2.87 - A popular sideboard option against pump spells
Armadillo Cloak (INV) - $3.68 - Used in the GW aura deck and has been a feature of pauper for a while.
Seat of the Synod (MRD) - $0.29 - Affinity is a cheap deck but this is the most expensive card in it,
Chittering Rats - $0.42 - 4-of for MBC
Nightscape Familiar - $1.40
Sunscape Familiar - $1.23 - Both are seen in Familiar storm decks which may be increasing in popularity after the bans.
One additional comment that I missed in the article. It's important to remember that Funeral Charm is an instant and so you can actually force your opponent to discard at instant speed. This means that if they have no cards in hand you can stop on their draw step and make them discard their card before they can play it, provided it can't be played at instant speed.
It's a play that I found very useful whilst running the deck.
Thanks guys.
Well Kuma sorry to be a dream crusher but as this was my first win with any deck I'm not too sorry, haha. Also, according to Gatherling your my biggest rival as I'm only 1-2 in matches against you, so you still have the upper hand there.
hi! Shambleshark really evolves my "landfall crab" deck, sience it already was UG. It´s defenetly not best tribal deck, crabs are crab, but it tryes hard and makes fun games.
4 Hedron crab
2 Mothdust Changeling
4 Shambleshark
4 Horseshoe Crab
4 Fortress Crab
2 Changeling Titan
2 Breakthrough
2 Deep analysis
2 Viridian longbow
2 Adventuring Gear
1 Condecend
1 Trinket Mage
2 Grazing Gladehart
2 Azusa, lost but seeking
7 Forest
9 Island
4 Hinterland harbor
4 Evolving wilds (evolving theme)
2 Ghost town
The real problem is MTGO is an investment....you need to know that if you spend 2000$ on mtgo that one day you will be able to sell all your stuff for some amount of $. It may be $12 or $12,000 but you need to be able to get something for it. The redemption has been ok but awkward way to do this until now. I think what would be really good is for wizards to buy back tickets for $1. No shady pokerstars transactions...no back alley meetings where people could easily screw you over. Just buy my tickets back. There wouldnt be a bunch of cards leaving mtgo or entering paper...etc etc etc.....Make it easy for people to "Cash out"
You noted that tickets would be more scarce by the increase of supply of boosters which I agree would be true. However heavy redeemers are a significant part of demand for tickets. So if the market doesn't adjust and redeemers pull out of the market the demand of tickets would lower. Now this assumes that the market won't just adjust and that redeemers would pull out. It also doesn't take into affect that even though redeemers are demanding tickets they aren't pulling any tickets out of the system. So I was wondering what affect this change would have on the price of tickets.
They have also seemed to been pushing phantom events which lowers cards entering the system. Maybe they fell that the supply of cards are to high in the system already.
Crushing my dreams of bringing a 6th Pod build to 1st place. :)
Clever build and excellent plays, congrats.
Nice, thank you! Likewise!
Plus: you need to come play in Tribal Apocalypse! We need more Johnnies!
Oh hey, congratulations! :) :)
are always awesome and inspiring. My johnny-focus is on classic, commander, and tribal. I read all of your tribal stuff, and am probably gonna give you a shout out in my current article.
Managed to take down Eurodrive 1.63 with the list in this article, so the deck seems to work nicely.
If the AJ in your head didn't also mention Stalking Vengeance for 40 damage or Death's Presence for 40 +1/+1 counters, it needs tweaking.