Great article and read. I enjoy your SOM block articles. I havethe Myr Battlestation in my sideboard for the UW control decks (helps you reset after sunblast----metalcraft and kiklks planeswalkers). Tumble magnets are awesome in helping koth get to ultimate. The deck can curve out nicely. Turn 2- Iron myr, Turn-3 koth (happens more times than you would think), turn 4 phoenix (happens more times that you would think), Turn 5 dragon.
The only problem right now is the profliferation of monored decks. I play the mirror more times than I would like. It feels you need to get "lucky" in the mirror to win.
The hardest part about this deck is mulliganing correctly. Alot of my losses are not mulliganing when I should....
Next articles:
Monoblack infect has some game and can be competitive. It loses to monored (arc trail, blast, spikeshot, tumble magnet, scrapmelter all are amazing against ity). It loses to UW if they get a tumbke magnet down and then venser. But you need to be AGGRO. drop tons of dudes and keep hitting through. You can 3-1 or 4-0.
Architect- Can have some pretty degenerate draws but can also be beaten with the right amount of hate. Best card besides the architect: Volition Reins (i hate that card when Im playing against MonoU).
WW-Has lots of game against UW control. But when Im playing monored and i know my matchup is WW, I do a fist pump. That is almost a guaranteed win unless they get the god hand of memnite, memnite, mox opal, tempered steel....even then post sideboard they get that hand and I can still beat them. shatter, blasts, arc trail, scrapnmelter, dragon.....
Your best bet if your tryng to 4-0 is to go Architect, Monoblack, and then WW (worst of the decks at the moment).
Hi Alex,
it's nice to see you again here on pauper and I hope you keep writing about good articles about pauper. It seems to me that there are few pauper articles on the site for the last weeks. Does it?
Regarding this article I like some of the fresh ideas you have brought and I want to have some spare time to test them and see what they can do. Your highlight on spreading seas reminds me that some weeks ago I tried a merfolks list based on it and arquitech's will and some islandwalkers but it wasn't near competive, even being so fun.
Last I would like you to explain a little deeper what you mind with the third option to improve pauper. Isn't it possible to play extended pauper now? Are you talking about wizards supporting that?
I am not a pauper player so my own take on this may be suspect. However I do not see the danger here. Just because a new threat hasn't emerged in a while to unsettle the top tier decks doesn't mean it won't. Surely with thousands of cards to choose from there are enough decks out there that can be built? It may be that some puzzle piece is missing. I am not a huge fan of banning cards for a couple of reasons but mainly because bans afflict us with an artificial environment. (Yes I know all magic environments are man-made but still. Freedom of choice is important.) Also it seems a relatively short time since SOM arrived. Surely there is not enough time here to say the sky is actually falling this time? Glad to see you are back in the mix of things Alex.
Nice analysis. I think the best solution would be the inclusion of Pauper Formats (as in Standard, Extended and Classic), but I doubt that Wizards will ever do it.
Funny you should title this spreading the love when you take such a negative tone. I thought the health issue had been debunked a few weeks ago when it became clear that storm actually wasn't dominating any top 8's.
The high price of drafting is what made me switch to budget constructed, as you pointed out. At 14 tix per draft, I just don't think there is any room to go infinite.
What is the average price of a non-mythic rare? 0.2? 0.25? This number goes up slightly when you factor your chances of opening a mythic, but when there is a strong possibility of opening less than 1 tix worth of cards from busting 3 packs, the goal immediately shifts to having to earn 1-2 place in the draft. This of course means that you will sometimes have to forego rare drafting that 0.5-1 tix rare in order to actually secure good cards.
Moreover though, going infinite essentially means you literally have to keep playing forever in order to maintain value. Even if you were somehow guaranteed to earn 2 place + open 2 tix worth of cards every draft, you would have to keep playing endlessly in order to maintain that value. Your only way out of this loop is to sell the pax at 12 tix and sell the cards to a bot at 2 tix, recouping your initial investment, along with hundreds of crap commons and uncommons that you can unload to a bot for almost nothing. Maybe if you're one of the lucky 0.0001% of ppl. on MTGO that can live this dream, you are essentially earning about $0.25/hour for your troubles.
I think being a drafter is depressing. Reading the Olivier Ruel column, it was really depressing to see a top, top pro scrub out on Round 1 very often. What is the hope for the average drafter?
I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but a SOM pack easily sells for 4 tix, you just have to be patient. In most cases, when I advertise selling for 4 tix, I am depleted of the 1-5 packs I started with within the hour.
This article has a lot of flawed logic. Your frustration about drafts are likely the result of false expectations.
1) All drafts have negative expected value (EV) for the average player. The EV for swiss or 8-4 are the same: 1.5 packs per draft for the average player (win ratio 50%).
2) The 4322 drafts have the lowest EV no matter what your skill is. So just simply avoid them. They are a trap. If you are rated to win about 50% of your matches, play swiss. If you are rated to win more than 50%, you can try the 8-4, but be aware of the higher variance in that queue.
3) If you are rated 50% to win, $600 will fuel you for 80 drafts without needing the sell cards. (calculated with a buy/sell price of $3.5 per pack and EV=1.5 packs/draft)
Lastly I suggest listening to the Limited Resources podcast #62 (http://www.mtgcast.com/?p=7137). It teaches you a lot about what to expect from drafts and how to manage your funds. Your goal should be not to try and 'go infinte', but to reduce your price per draft to a few bucks.
(edit)PS: Probotector clearly thinks and types faster than me ;)
If you are an average player and you play for fun, then you should draft swiss. It gives you 3 hours of fun for approximately 5$.
If you are an average player, you'll win 1.5 packs/draft, and let's say you rare draft every card above 2$ (bot buy price) which means (in SOM) you'll get on average 0.8$ for every pack you open, that's 2.4$ per draft from raredrafting.
Boosters cost approximately 3.75$ and you need to buy 1.5 boosters for a new draft, that's 1.5 x 3.75$ = 5.625$. If we add 2 tickets to that amount and then substract 2.4$ from opened rares we arrive to a total of 5.2$. We can easily substract at least another 0.2$ from the drafted rares that are under 2$ but we still take them because there's nothing in our colors/nothing we need.
So for 600$ you get 120 and not 40 drafts. That is if you are an average player, and it is very easy to be above average in swiss. You made a ridiculous overstatement and you should edit your article since it's not just a minor mistake.
Yeah, draft is a "money sink", as is going to the movies or buying a book or videogame or whatever, but 5$ for 3 hours of fun is hardly a bad price, compared to other stuff.
Overall, I think you made a very bad article. It's supposed to be informative, but it gives completely wrong informations.
I wouldn't be afraid of that. As long as you play tournaments, you help remove tickets from the system. These tickets have to come from somewhere (people buying packs/singles from you). In the end they originated in the store and made wizards some dollars.
This is the best written article in a long time, kudos to you my friend! Bout' time someone stepped up and criticized the game played along these lines.
I put the first link you gave (the indestructible one) into my browser, and I found a bunch of stuff. The lich link worked for me too. Maybe Gatherer was glitchy when you did the search earlier? I know that people have had problems with it in the past. But it looks like you are doing it right.
My limited rating fluctuates between 1750 and 1850. Lower when I decide to play formats I'm not comfortable with (such as Scars draft right now), higher when I play my niche formats (Urza). So I'm slightly higher than average player I would think.
Just want to share my 3 months of drafts' statistics. I have been keeping track of every event I join recently, sell the cards right away, or note their prices if I will keep them. So after every draft I know how much I lost or won. (Kinda lame, but helped me to show where to cut my losses)
Urza block draft (nix tix): +59 tickets net value in 30 drafts.
Rise of Eldrazi and ZZW (Zendikar) drafts: -13 tickets net in 47 drafts
Various Nix Tix drafts other than Urza (these have great advantage since you do not pay that 2 tickets extra into drafts): 125 tickets net in 42 drafts
M11 and Scars drafts (which pros play more, I guess): -40 tickets in 17 drafts
So see for yourself. Going infinite is possible with ~1800 rating, with a little bit of working in selling stuff; but you have to shy away from the shark infested waters of the current big draft (M11 and Scars) formats. You won't be rich, but you won't draft-starve either.
Also. WotC is out there to make money. I do not think they made the mythics without foreseeing these results. They ARE making more money right now, and I'm sure they like it. (And for some reason I have a feeling WoTC doesn't like me, since I do not put much money in their system. I hope they do not ban me or something for that.)
The problem with this is that the other lemonade stands don't mind people buying out all their lemonade. (At least to my knowledge...I buy bulk cards I think will jump in price all the time from Cardbot, and they don't seem to mind.)
Pete, I don't really understand the way you refer to legality. I just read Part 1 as well, and you said things like: "Angelic Voices (...) It is a really bad Glorious Anthem." (Actually it's closer to a very bad Honor of the Pure, but whatever). "This card will be legal only in Classic". Why?
And again: "Drain Power (...) If this card were legal in anything but Classic". But it is. It will be legal in like half a dozen different official formats (and maybe Heirloom too). Essentially, all those cards except a few banned ones will be legal everywhere but Standard and Extended. A lot of formats to be taken into account within a set overview/analysis, not just Classic.
BTW, Smoke is red because... eh... the smoke comes from fire. :) (That's how the early designers' minds actually worked!)
But MTGOTraders isn't just trying to sell all of its lemonade. They're trying to run a Lemonade Stand. Which means they want people coming back tomorrow to get more lemonade from them. If they sell all of their lemonade to you, no matter what you do with it, the next guy who comes looking for lemonade today will walk away disappointed, and then not come back tomorrow. What makes short term sense for you or I in terms of short term turnaround on speculation is not necessarily in the best interest of MTGOtraders in terms of long term business.
for starters, nice first time article pf. i'm sure you'll make it more pretty next time. there are a lot more new players online, and they are horrible lol.
*firemind*,
I disagree. u should hold the bolts. in that situation he has a much lower mana curve implying that he is more likely to draw into threats. i suppose you could but why risk it. you can take the damage and wrath effect him. then follow that up w/ the ulti. a good player wouldn't flood the board after that, you shouldnt have to burn a bolt. a turn 6 ultimatum w/ the relic out will leave you w/ a mana up. (6 from the turn 1 stored from the relic). Save the burn kill em next turn, you should be ahead enough to take a hit unless he top decks.
Great article and read. I enjoy your SOM block articles. I havethe Myr Battlestation in my sideboard for the UW control decks (helps you reset after sunblast----metalcraft and kiklks planeswalkers). Tumble magnets are awesome in helping koth get to ultimate. The deck can curve out nicely. Turn 2- Iron myr, Turn-3 koth (happens more times than you would think), turn 4 phoenix (happens more times that you would think), Turn 5 dragon.
The only problem right now is the profliferation of monored decks. I play the mirror more times than I would like. It feels you need to get "lucky" in the mirror to win.
The hardest part about this deck is mulliganing correctly. Alot of my losses are not mulliganing when I should....
Next articles:
Monoblack infect has some game and can be competitive. It loses to monored (arc trail, blast, spikeshot, tumble magnet, scrapmelter all are amazing against ity). It loses to UW if they get a tumbke magnet down and then venser. But you need to be AGGRO. drop tons of dudes and keep hitting through. You can 3-1 or 4-0.
Architect- Can have some pretty degenerate draws but can also be beaten with the right amount of hate. Best card besides the architect: Volition Reins (i hate that card when Im playing against MonoU).
WW-Has lots of game against UW control. But when Im playing monored and i know my matchup is WW, I do a fist pump. That is almost a guaranteed win unless they get the god hand of memnite, memnite, mox opal, tempered steel....even then post sideboard they get that hand and I can still beat them. shatter, blasts, arc trail, scrapnmelter, dragon.....
Your best bet if your tryng to 4-0 is to go Architect, Monoblack, and then WW (worst of the decks at the moment).
Thanks
Hi Alex,
it's nice to see you again here on pauper and I hope you keep writing about good articles about pauper. It seems to me that there are few pauper articles on the site for the last weeks. Does it?
Regarding this article I like some of the fresh ideas you have brought and I want to have some spare time to test them and see what they can do. Your highlight on spreading seas reminds me that some weeks ago I tried a merfolks list based on it and arquitech's will and some islandwalkers but it wasn't near competive, even being so fun.
Last I would like you to explain a little deeper what you mind with the third option to improve pauper. Isn't it possible to play extended pauper now? Are you talking about wizards supporting that?
Thanks and greetings
I am not a pauper player so my own take on this may be suspect. However I do not see the danger here. Just because a new threat hasn't emerged in a while to unsettle the top tier decks doesn't mean it won't. Surely with thousands of cards to choose from there are enough decks out there that can be built? It may be that some puzzle piece is missing. I am not a huge fan of banning cards for a couple of reasons but mainly because bans afflict us with an artificial environment. (Yes I know all magic environments are man-made but still. Freedom of choice is important.) Also it seems a relatively short time since SOM arrived. Surely there is not enough time here to say the sky is actually falling this time? Glad to see you are back in the mix of things Alex.
...and back.
Nice analysis. I think the best solution would be the inclusion of Pauper Formats (as in Standard, Extended and Classic), but I doubt that Wizards will ever do it.
Welcome back! :D
I really missed your articles. On to the actual reading now. ;)
Funny you should title this spreading the love when you take such a negative tone. I thought the health issue had been debunked a few weeks ago when it became clear that storm actually wasn't dominating any top 8's.
just played to second place finish...got flooded for my only loss.. Miss ya doc!
Agreed
yea... I think it may come down to the opponent come to think of it.
The high price of drafting is what made me switch to budget constructed, as you pointed out. At 14 tix per draft, I just don't think there is any room to go infinite.
What is the average price of a non-mythic rare? 0.2? 0.25? This number goes up slightly when you factor your chances of opening a mythic, but when there is a strong possibility of opening less than 1 tix worth of cards from busting 3 packs, the goal immediately shifts to having to earn 1-2 place in the draft. This of course means that you will sometimes have to forego rare drafting that 0.5-1 tix rare in order to actually secure good cards.
Moreover though, going infinite essentially means you literally have to keep playing forever in order to maintain value. Even if you were somehow guaranteed to earn 2 place + open 2 tix worth of cards every draft, you would have to keep playing endlessly in order to maintain that value. Your only way out of this loop is to sell the pax at 12 tix and sell the cards to a bot at 2 tix, recouping your initial investment, along with hundreds of crap commons and uncommons that you can unload to a bot for almost nothing. Maybe if you're one of the lucky 0.0001% of ppl. on MTGO that can live this dream, you are essentially earning about $0.25/hour for your troubles.
I think being a drafter is depressing. Reading the Olivier Ruel column, it was really depressing to see a top, top pro scrub out on Round 1 very often. What is the hope for the average drafter?
I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but a SOM pack easily sells for 4 tix, you just have to be patient. In most cases, when I advertise selling for 4 tix, I am depleted of the 1-5 packs I started with within the hour.
Gimli, that's a great article. The points are not the most complex, but you hammer them home. Keep it up.
This article has a lot of flawed logic. Your frustration about drafts are likely the result of false expectations.
1) All drafts have negative expected value (EV) for the average player. The EV for swiss or 8-4 are the same: 1.5 packs per draft for the average player (win ratio 50%).
2) The 4322 drafts have the lowest EV no matter what your skill is. So just simply avoid them. They are a trap. If you are rated to win about 50% of your matches, play swiss. If you are rated to win more than 50%, you can try the 8-4, but be aware of the higher variance in that queue.
3) If you are rated 50% to win, $600 will fuel you for 80 drafts without needing the sell cards. (calculated with a buy/sell price of $3.5 per pack and EV=1.5 packs/draft)
Lastly I suggest listening to the Limited Resources podcast #62 (http://www.mtgcast.com/?p=7137). It teaches you a lot about what to expect from drafts and how to manage your funds. Your goal should be not to try and 'go infinte', but to reduce your price per draft to a few bucks.
(edit)PS: Probotector clearly thinks and types faster than me ;)
If you are an average player and you play for fun, then you should draft swiss. It gives you 3 hours of fun for approximately 5$.
If you are an average player, you'll win 1.5 packs/draft, and let's say you rare draft every card above 2$ (bot buy price) which means (in SOM) you'll get on average 0.8$ for every pack you open, that's 2.4$ per draft from raredrafting.
Boosters cost approximately 3.75$ and you need to buy 1.5 boosters for a new draft, that's 1.5 x 3.75$ = 5.625$. If we add 2 tickets to that amount and then substract 2.4$ from opened rares we arrive to a total of 5.2$. We can easily substract at least another 0.2$ from the drafted rares that are under 2$ but we still take them because there's nothing in our colors/nothing we need.
So for 600$ you get 120 and not 40 drafts. That is if you are an average player, and it is very easy to be above average in swiss. You made a ridiculous overstatement and you should edit your article since it's not just a minor mistake.
Yeah, draft is a "money sink", as is going to the movies or buying a book or videogame or whatever, but 5$ for 3 hours of fun is hardly a bad price, compared to other stuff.
Overall, I think you made a very bad article. It's supposed to be informative, but it gives completely wrong informations.
I wouldn't be afraid of that. As long as you play tournaments, you help remove tickets from the system. These tickets have to come from somewhere (people buying packs/singles from you). In the end they originated in the store and made wizards some dollars.
This is the best written article in a long time, kudos to you my friend! Bout' time someone stepped up and criticized the game played along these lines.
I put the first link you gave (the indestructible one) into my browser, and I found a bunch of stuff. The lich link worked for me too. Maybe Gatherer was glitchy when you did the search earlier? I know that people have had problems with it in the past. But it looks like you are doing it right.
2x pack cost
My limited rating fluctuates between 1750 and 1850. Lower when I decide to play formats I'm not comfortable with (such as Scars draft right now), higher when I play my niche formats (Urza). So I'm slightly higher than average player I would think.
Just want to share my 3 months of drafts' statistics. I have been keeping track of every event I join recently, sell the cards right away, or note their prices if I will keep them. So after every draft I know how much I lost or won. (Kinda lame, but helped me to show where to cut my losses)
Urza block draft (nix tix): +59 tickets net value in 30 drafts.
Rise of Eldrazi and ZZW (Zendikar) drafts: -13 tickets net in 47 drafts
Various Nix Tix drafts other than Urza (these have great advantage since you do not pay that 2 tickets extra into drafts): 125 tickets net in 42 drafts
M11 and Scars drafts (which pros play more, I guess): -40 tickets in 17 drafts
So see for yourself. Going infinite is possible with ~1800 rating, with a little bit of working in selling stuff; but you have to shy away from the shark infested waters of the current big draft (M11 and Scars) formats. You won't be rich, but you won't draft-starve either.
Also. WotC is out there to make money. I do not think they made the mythics without foreseeing these results. They ARE making more money right now, and I'm sure they like it. (And for some reason I have a feeling WoTC doesn't like me, since I do not put much money in their system. I hope they do not ban me or something for that.)
The problem with this is that the other lemonade stands don't mind people buying out all their lemonade. (At least to my knowledge...I buy bulk cards I think will jump in price all the time from Cardbot, and they don't seem to mind.)
Pete, I don't really understand the way you refer to legality. I just read Part 1 as well, and you said things like: "Angelic Voices (...) It is a really bad Glorious Anthem." (Actually it's closer to a very bad Honor of the Pure, but whatever). "This card will be legal only in Classic". Why?
And again: "Drain Power (...) If this card were legal in anything but Classic". But it is. It will be legal in like half a dozen different official formats (and maybe Heirloom too). Essentially, all those cards except a few banned ones will be legal everywhere but Standard and Extended. A lot of formats to be taken into account within a set overview/analysis, not just Classic.
BTW, Smoke is red because... eh... the smoke comes from fire. :) (That's how the early designers' minds actually worked!)
But MTGOTraders isn't just trying to sell all of its lemonade. They're trying to run a Lemonade Stand. Which means they want people coming back tomorrow to get more lemonade from them. If they sell all of their lemonade to you, no matter what you do with it, the next guy who comes looking for lemonade today will walk away disappointed, and then not come back tomorrow. What makes short term sense for you or I in terms of short term turnaround on speculation is not necessarily in the best interest of MTGOtraders in terms of long term business.
That's interesting. I'm not a drafter, so why is the cut-off at 8 tix? There's probably something obvious that I'm missing.
I agree with respect to the origin spellbomb pick, and the formatting. I didn't like this mini-picture plan at all!
for starters, nice first time article pf. i'm sure you'll make it more pretty next time. there are a lot more new players online, and they are horrible lol.
*firemind*,
I disagree. u should hold the bolts. in that situation he has a much lower mana curve implying that he is more likely to draw into threats. i suppose you could but why risk it. you can take the damage and wrath effect him. then follow that up w/ the ulti. a good player wouldn't flood the board after that, you shouldnt have to burn a bolt. a turn 6 ultimatum w/ the relic out will leave you w/ a mana up. (6 from the turn 1 stored from the relic). Save the burn kill em next turn, you should be ahead enough to take a hit unless he top decks.