luck is just a continuously favorable outcome of chances taken, unfavorable outcomes become bad luck or the lack there of.. chance and stats are very real and you can better your odds of statistically drawing the card you want by card choice yes, but to say that luck doesn't exist is just silly imo
"Luck" is a purely human concept just as "Time" and "Possession" are. But you cannot simply dismiss the phenomenon just because it doesn't fit the paradigm you choose to define your world with. I, for one, dislike the notion of lucky/unlucky because it is messy and doesn't take into account one's own responsibility for doing things. Yet there have been times that I have been extremely fortunate/unfortunate through no actions of my own. To misquote someone famous: "Stuff happens." In magic stuff happens a lot.
I have seen my opponents take a deck that should autoroll mine and just lose to bad top decks after a horrible start. I have done the same vs a deck my deck should never lose to. (Who loses to burn in a format with so much life gain and prevention available?) It happens. It isn't just flood/screw. Yes you are correct that bringing the best cards for the situation you are in helps make your luck but it is the height of arrogance to negate what the others are saying just because you are partially right.
like I wrote: "rarely is this valid unless sealed decks are involved and/or mana flood/screw, all other issues I give no credit to with regards to luck." - only valid forms of bad luck imo
if you have 2 people running the same list playing X games and one person continues to get better draws while the other struggles... you think that isn't luck? Yes I get that's not a realistic scenario, but truth is that while yes card choice is important there is an element of chance involved, that's just how things are it's not really a point that can be debated it's more like fact
Yeah like today I had 4 wraths in hand at one point and not enough land...should have replaced the wraths with more land to make my % even higher than 40% +fixers.
My MTGO quote says it all: "I'm SO lucky! I keep drawing cards I put in my deck!! IT'S AMAZING!"
- Luck is built, card by card, choice by choice.
Winners win, losers talk about how unlucky they were...rarely is this valid unless sealed decks are involved and/or mana flood/screw, all other issues I give no credit to with regards to luck.
The problem with using a historical example is that not only is there sampling bias, but also the rarity change was not done independently vs a control group. (Sets got smaller among other changes.) Instead, let me try an ex-ante analysis. ("Ex-ante", for the curious, means reasoning a theory based purely on logic, which can afterward be tested in practice. As opposed to a "ex-post", where you see what happened and then create a theory why.) Warning in advance: it's long.
Consider a dealer like MTGOTraders who rips packs to provide singles. The value of the singles must be >= the value of the packs. Must be, otherwise they couldn't do it. But not infinitely greater, because competition pushes the prices down. (And anyone could open packs themselves, so the competition is broad.) The result is that in order for this to work, every 120 packs must produce at least 480 tickets worth of singles. We'll say it's worth $N, with N > 480 but as low as possible due to market forces.
120 packs on average yield 1 of each Mythic, 2 of each rare, 6 of each uncommon, 12 of each common, and 6 of each basic land. So for any set, the prices of those singles must add up to N. That means when any one card gains in value, it permits downward movement on the rest. Do the others have to move down? Strictly speaking no, but remember competition pushes N down toward 480. So practically speaking it does, yes.
Let's consider some extreme cases here as a hypothetical to watch how it works. Suppose there was only 1 good card in the set, and everything else is universally acknoweldged as worthless. If that 1 card is a Mythic, it must be worth N. If it's rare, it must be worth N/2. N/6 for an uncommon, and N/12 for a common. There more there are, the less each one must cost.
We'll expand that to two good cards, both equally good and the same rarity. And we'll further say they are non-substitutes, and usable together. (That part will matter in a moment.) Two good Mythics are N/2 each. Good rares N/4. Uncommons N/12, commons N/24. Pretty straightforward - more examples among a rarity is analogous to moving to a lower rarity.
Again let me emphasize that in this hypothetical example, all other cards in the set are valueless. AKA free. If Mythics are the only value then rares, uncommons, and commons are free. If commons are the only value then Mythics are free. (Because they're trash.) So it's not strictly a given which rarity is subsidizing the others.
Now let's mix rarities - a mythic and a rare - but otherwise keep the same conditions. So again we'll say they are equally desireable. But that's a problem, because they can not exist in equal quantities! It's not possible, because the supply is coupled in a fixed ratio. The instinct is to say N/2 for the mythic and N/4 for the rare, so that 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/4 = 100%. But buyers don't want two rares with their one mythic. They want one rare with their one mythic. That leads to 1/2 + 1/4 + unsold = 3/4 N which is not sufficient to justify being a seller.
So, the price of the rares must come down until the price alone makes them more desireable. And as a result, the price of the Mythic must go up to maintain N. Now how much price move is necessary varies by card; I can't say ex-ante. But I can say this: suppose the two cards are two halves of a BFM, one mythic and one rare, and worthless without the other half. The only way that system reaches equilibrium is if the rare is free and the mythic price = $N. (A half BFM that will never have it's other half being itself worthless.) And though the BFM case is an extreme example, it's just an exaggeration of the truth. Competitive players want 4x everything, not 4x some and 12x others, so the BFM principle is in effect.
Although harder to visualize, the reverse is true if the rare is somehow 3x as desireable as the mythic. Now the rare is the limiting factor and the mythic is the byproduct. Because there's nothing we can do to make the supply ratio fit demand, price must be used to make demand fit supply.
So do Mythics make rares cheaper? Yes they do, but only if we really want the mythics and are settling for the rares. In the case of the Bloodbraid Elf, I'd say it's the other way around: BBE at his 4.5 tix has enabled Thraximundar to be cheaper. And the fact that Maelstrom Pulse didn't pull a Tarmogoyf is based not on Mythics, which were undesirable, but on valuable uncommons and the fact that sets are smaller.
i guess if you want to really stretch it out and not poke holes in it...to start with gideon is only 4 tix a piece sine the only way to get is at the very very very very start from a booster and boosters cost 4?
No I caught that, and to prevent new cards crowding off established ones from your "top 10" tables it's a good idea. That doesn't change the fact that some of the data presented is apocryphal.
Again I understand why this happens, but separate tables don't prevent an uninformed reader from thinking "oh no, I missed out on Gideon and it shot up 12x as much!" They didn't, because it wasn't available. You know that and I know that, but the "with Rize" table implies otherwise.
I understand what you are saying, but there is still an element of luck involved with Magic. The trick is to learn how to maximise the random elements to your advantage. If your odds are 40%, then you need to get them to 41%. If they are 80%, you need to get them to 81%. If your odds are 10%, you need to get them to 11%.
For some replacements, Diabolic Tutor can easily replace Demonic. If you're worried about casting cost, go for Grim Tutor instead. (oops, forgot Diabolic was already in there.)
The Swords are tough to replace, as they provide protection with useful abilities. But Light and Shadow was mainly used for it's recursion. You could probably replace that with Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni or Reya, Dawnbringer. Fire and Ice was mainly for draw, with the benefit of damage, so that may be replaced by Ambition's Cost or Sign in Blood or something similar. But if you want another piece of equipment, Jitte and Warhammer are usually pretty good as well.
The other cards are tougher to replace, but it sounds like you are doing well so far!
I'll be honest, I haven't picked up this deck since I finished the article. I already have the next 4 articles planned out, but if you have more questions, give me a holler here, or find me in game. Username: Tarasco.
Im still missing 15 cards, but I have fillers in there right now, but the deck is very very strong. I would love to see an updated version of this deck and article soon.
I still need Urborg, Volraths Stonghold, Coffers, Miren, the Swords, Angel of Despair, Demonic Tutor, and some other fairly expensive cards, but the deck is still strong.
I thought this was a very good article with a lot of good information and insight. One thing I need to take issue with however, is the statement that "Magic is a game of luck". I think Magic is a game that has a large luck component, however playing Magic well requires a lot of skill (something I am sadly lacking). You identified several important skills earlier in the article. Luck certainly plays a role in how the cards come into your hand, but as you pointed out a well built deck with a good plan can sometimes overcome a little bad luck.
If redemption ends close to a rotation I’d imagine the results would be meaningless. For useful data we’d need to see redemption end while a card still has significant time left in Standard.
What would you guess to be the total number redemptions from a typical set? Hundreds? Thousands?
As far as I know WotC doesn't publish the official numbers. However there is significant evidence to show that redemption is a significant factor in terms of price. That evidence is secondary, and therefore doesn't prove anything. However most of the evidence indicates that there is a relationship between redemption and card price.
1. A promo mythic rare is usually cheaper than the non-promo version of the same card.
2. WotC publishes when they run out of Magic Online sets for redemption and I've heard that the price of cards drift a bit when this happens.
3. Before Mythics, drafters and sealed deck players used to be able to sell bulk bad rares to bots for nontrivial prices such as 3 for 1 ticket and 6 for 1 ticket and there were very few rares that bots wouldn't touch. That is no longer true for rares, but even terrible mythics don't drop below $0.50.
4. Ebay has at least some evidence of players selling Magic Online redeemed sets. However this misses the players who redeem sets to play in paper events, sell to stores, or just keep them.
5. I haven't checked this, but another test you could do is see how prices are effected when a set becomes no longer redeamable.
I'm by no means trying to say less supply of mythics doesn't impact the price of the big four. But it is far overshadowed by the DEMAND for those cards.
Its pretty simple really. If you don't want to pay $70 for Jace then don't. I haven't and never will.
Indeed. That is what I said above.
luck is just a continuously favorable outcome of chances taken, unfavorable outcomes become bad luck or the lack there of.. chance and stats are very real and you can better your odds of statistically drawing the card you want by card choice yes, but to say that luck doesn't exist is just silly imo
"Luck" is a purely human concept just as "Time" and "Possession" are. But you cannot simply dismiss the phenomenon just because it doesn't fit the paradigm you choose to define your world with. I, for one, dislike the notion of lucky/unlucky because it is messy and doesn't take into account one's own responsibility for doing things. Yet there have been times that I have been extremely fortunate/unfortunate through no actions of my own. To misquote someone famous: "Stuff happens." In magic stuff happens a lot.
I have seen my opponents take a deck that should autoroll mine and just lose to bad top decks after a horrible start. I have done the same vs a deck my deck should never lose to. (Who loses to burn in a format with so much life gain and prevention available?) It happens. It isn't just flood/screw. Yes you are correct that bringing the best cards for the situation you are in helps make your luck but it is the height of arrogance to negate what the others are saying just because you are partially right.
like I wrote: "rarely is this valid unless sealed decks are involved and/or mana flood/screw, all other issues I give no credit to with regards to luck." - only valid forms of bad luck imo
if you have 2 people running the same list playing X games and one person continues to get better draws while the other struggles... you think that isn't luck? Yes I get that's not a realistic scenario, but truth is that while yes card choice is important there is an element of chance involved, that's just how things are it's not really a point that can be debated it's more like fact
Yeah like today I had 4 wraths in hand at one point and not enough land...should have replaced the wraths with more land to make my % even higher than 40% +fixers.
i couldn't agree more. the more time you spend making good card choices it's amazing the luck you have.
My MTGO quote says it all: "I'm SO lucky! I keep drawing cards I put in my deck!! IT'S AMAZING!"
- Luck is built, card by card, choice by choice.
Winners win, losers talk about how unlucky they were...rarely is this valid unless sealed decks are involved and/or mana flood/screw, all other issues I give no credit to with regards to luck.
Girl needs some jewelry
You can not even crack expidition map until turn 3 (assuming you drop two post or a post and vesuva)
Test - weird things happening with the article editor today lol
The problem with using a historical example is that not only is there sampling bias, but also the rarity change was not done independently vs a control group. (Sets got smaller among other changes.) Instead, let me try an ex-ante analysis. ("Ex-ante", for the curious, means reasoning a theory based purely on logic, which can afterward be tested in practice. As opposed to a "ex-post", where you see what happened and then create a theory why.) Warning in advance: it's long.
Consider a dealer like MTGOTraders who rips packs to provide singles. The value of the singles must be >= the value of the packs. Must be, otherwise they couldn't do it. But not infinitely greater, because competition pushes the prices down. (And anyone could open packs themselves, so the competition is broad.) The result is that in order for this to work, every 120 packs must produce at least 480 tickets worth of singles. We'll say it's worth $N, with N > 480 but as low as possible due to market forces.
120 packs on average yield 1 of each Mythic, 2 of each rare, 6 of each uncommon, 12 of each common, and 6 of each basic land. So for any set, the prices of those singles must add up to N. That means when any one card gains in value, it permits downward movement on the rest. Do the others have to move down? Strictly speaking no, but remember competition pushes N down toward 480. So practically speaking it does, yes.
Let's consider some extreme cases here as a hypothetical to watch how it works. Suppose there was only 1 good card in the set, and everything else is universally acknoweldged as worthless. If that 1 card is a Mythic, it must be worth N. If it's rare, it must be worth N/2. N/6 for an uncommon, and N/12 for a common. There more there are, the less each one must cost.
We'll expand that to two good cards, both equally good and the same rarity. And we'll further say they are non-substitutes, and usable together. (That part will matter in a moment.) Two good Mythics are N/2 each. Good rares N/4. Uncommons N/12, commons N/24. Pretty straightforward - more examples among a rarity is analogous to moving to a lower rarity.
Again let me emphasize that in this hypothetical example, all other cards in the set are valueless. AKA free. If Mythics are the only value then rares, uncommons, and commons are free. If commons are the only value then Mythics are free. (Because they're trash.) So it's not strictly a given which rarity is subsidizing the others.
Now let's mix rarities - a mythic and a rare - but otherwise keep the same conditions. So again we'll say they are equally desireable. But that's a problem, because they can not exist in equal quantities! It's not possible, because the supply is coupled in a fixed ratio. The instinct is to say N/2 for the mythic and N/4 for the rare, so that 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/4 = 100%. But buyers don't want two rares with their one mythic. They want one rare with their one mythic. That leads to 1/2 + 1/4 + unsold = 3/4 N which is not sufficient to justify being a seller.
So, the price of the rares must come down until the price alone makes them more desireable. And as a result, the price of the Mythic must go up to maintain N. Now how much price move is necessary varies by card; I can't say ex-ante. But I can say this: suppose the two cards are two halves of a BFM, one mythic and one rare, and worthless without the other half. The only way that system reaches equilibrium is if the rare is free and the mythic price = $N. (A half BFM that will never have it's other half being itself worthless.) And though the BFM case is an extreme example, it's just an exaggeration of the truth. Competitive players want 4x everything, not 4x some and 12x others, so the BFM principle is in effect.
Although harder to visualize, the reverse is true if the rare is somehow 3x as desireable as the mythic. Now the rare is the limiting factor and the mythic is the byproduct. Because there's nothing we can do to make the supply ratio fit demand, price must be used to make demand fit supply.
So do Mythics make rares cheaper? Yes they do, but only if we really want the mythics and are settling for the rares. In the case of the Bloodbraid Elf, I'd say it's the other way around: BBE at his 4.5 tix has enabled Thraximundar to be cheaper. And the fact that Maelstrom Pulse didn't pull a Tarmogoyf is based not on Mythics, which were undesirable, but on valuable uncommons and the fact that sets are smaller.
i guess if you want to really stretch it out and not poke holes in it...to start with gideon is only 4 tix a piece sine the only way to get is at the very very very very start from a booster and boosters cost 4?
No I caught that, and to prevent new cards crowding off established ones from your "top 10" tables it's a good idea. That doesn't change the fact that some of the data presented is apocryphal.
Again I understand why this happens, but separate tables don't prevent an uninformed reader from thinking "oh no, I missed out on Gideon and it shot up 12x as much!" They didn't, because it wasn't available. You know that and I know that, but the "with Rize" table implies otherwise.
I understand what you are saying, but there is still an element of luck involved with Magic. The trick is to learn how to maximise the random elements to your advantage. If your odds are 40%, then you need to get them to 41%. If they are 80%, you need to get them to 81%. If your odds are 10%, you need to get them to 11%.
you honestly believe the situation would be that different?
"""If every card was available to whoever wanted it the metagame would quickly turn to everyone playing the best decks and not much innovation."""
Just stop now.
Glad you like the deck!
For some replacements, Diabolic Tutor can easily replace Demonic. If you're worried about casting cost, go for Grim Tutor instead. (oops, forgot Diabolic was already in there.)
The Swords are tough to replace, as they provide protection with useful abilities. But Light and Shadow was mainly used for it's recursion. You could probably replace that with Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni or Reya, Dawnbringer. Fire and Ice was mainly for draw, with the benefit of damage, so that may be replaced by Ambition's Cost or Sign in Blood or something similar. But if you want another piece of equipment, Jitte and Warhammer are usually pretty good as well.
The other cards are tougher to replace, but it sounds like you are doing well so far!
I'll be honest, I haven't picked up this deck since I finished the article. I already have the next 4 articles planned out, but if you have more questions, give me a holler here, or find me in game. Username: Tarasco.
Im still missing 15 cards, but I have fillers in there right now, but the deck is very very strong. I would love to see an updated version of this deck and article soon.
I still need Urborg, Volraths Stonghold, Coffers, Miren, the Swords, Angel of Despair, Demonic Tutor, and some other fairly expensive cards, but the deck is still strong.
I thought this was a very good article with a lot of good information and insight. One thing I need to take issue with however, is the statement that "Magic is a game of luck". I think Magic is a game that has a large luck component, however playing Magic well requires a lot of skill (something I am sadly lacking). You identified several important skills earlier in the article. Luck certainly plays a role in how the cards come into your hand, but as you pointed out a well built deck with a good plan can sometimes overcome a little bad luck.
If redemption ends close to a rotation I’d imagine the results would be meaningless. For useful data we’d need to see redemption end while a card still has significant time left in Standard.
What would you guess to be the total number redemptions from a typical set? Hundreds? Thousands?
As far as I know WotC doesn't publish the official numbers. However there is significant evidence to show that redemption is a significant factor in terms of price. That evidence is secondary, and therefore doesn't prove anything. However most of the evidence indicates that there is a relationship between redemption and card price.
1. A promo mythic rare is usually cheaper than the non-promo version of the same card.
2. WotC publishes when they run out of Magic Online sets for redemption and I've heard that the price of cards drift a bit when this happens.
3. Before Mythics, drafters and sealed deck players used to be able to sell bulk bad rares to bots for nontrivial prices such as 3 for 1 ticket and 6 for 1 ticket and there were very few rares that bots wouldn't touch. That is no longer true for rares, but even terrible mythics don't drop below $0.50.
4. Ebay has at least some evidence of players selling Magic Online redeemed sets. However this misses the players who redeem sets to play in paper events, sell to stores, or just keep them.
5. I haven't checked this, but another test you could do is see how prices are effected when a set becomes no longer redeamable.
There is no reason to be a jerk after a win or a loss.
Great article.
Are there figures out there on how many sets are actually redeemed?
I'm by no means trying to say less supply of mythics doesn't impact the price of the big four. But it is far overshadowed by the DEMAND for those cards.
Its pretty simple really. If you don't want to pay $70 for Jace then don't. I haven't and never will.