I don't think you understand what EV means, otherwise you wouldn't say that EV is non-existant in swiss. EV is better in swiss if your winrate is lower than a certain % (around 62-66%, depends on which set you are drafting) and better in 4-3-2-2 if your winrate is higher than that. For me playing swiss is indeed a slightly worse option than playing 4-3-2-2 (strictly money wise), but the difference is minor, and I get to play 3 rounds no matter what. Since I know that with my winrate I am losing money no matter which event I play, I rather spend a fraction of a ticket more and play more time for my money.
You are not getting 6-7 packs per two 4-3-2-2 events with a winrate of 60-70%. You are getting 3.6 - 4.5 packs. It's a basic math and you are just throwing some unrealistic numbers out there.
I don't know what experience you have with playing Swiss vs 4-3-2-2, but I have played reasonable amounts of 4-3-2-2 (due to release events), and I don't think there is any substantial difference neither in skill level nor in cards being passed. In both formats you occassionally get passed some rare that is worth 1-4 tix (usually some rare land), but that is it. Maybe I'm wrong, because I haven't really paid attention to that aspect until now.
There are some situations where certain uncommons are worth a lot, and that can influence EV of the draft (though that can also reflect in the price of the boosters, so the EV might actually be lower because of that), but they are rare. FRF has Wild Slash and Valorous Stance that you can currently sell for around a tix, KTK has nothing, whole RTR block had nothing, Innistrad had nothing, SOM had nothing until NPH, same is true for Zendikar and ROE etc. Majority of time, when you draft a current set, uncommons and commons will be worth nothing, except just at the beginning and sometimes when the set stops being heavily drafted. But there are exceptions as you point out. You have to calculate the number of times you will open those high-price uncommons (and add an assumption of the times they will get passed to you) though, to get a realistic figure of what money you can expect from them.
As for "easily having win percentage higher than 70% in limited", I disagree. Maybe it's easy for you, but it's a very high percentage that only a small fraction of players can achieve.
The EV calculator incorporates the value of all the cards in a booster. As it says: "Takes into account difference between buy and sell prices. Rare & Mythic prices are from SuperNovaBots, 'money' Common & Uncommon prices are hand tabulated."
Regardless, even if uncommons *weren't* being tabulated by the EV calculator, incorporating such data would do nothing to increase the EV in 4322s without increasing it for Swiss and 84s as well. There is simply nothing in the math to support your claim that 4322s should be played over 84s and Swiss.
But hey, when the math doesn't fit your narrative, dismiss it out of hand, and present statistically-insignificant anecdotal evidence that *does* support your narrative! A time-honored response to pesky, unwanted statistics. Much easier than either disproving it with math of your own, or acknowledging that your gut might be in error.
In any case, while these math-supported resources may not be able to penetrate your willful ignorance on this subject, they now at least accompany your article as a warning for rational thinkers who might otherwise make the mistake of taking your queue advice at face value.
Matthew presented an alternative voice to going infinite that I felt was worth looking at. I see with the amount of discussion that has sprung up over this it was correct!
Yeah I dont agree with any of that. Both MagicEV and those articles fail to realize one thing, and that is those uncommons that are worth 1-3 tix. That is why I call it "money drafting" and not "rare drafting", since you have uncommons worth more than mythics. Also none of those articles mention how money is not passed very often in Swiss. This is why 4-3-2-2 is the sweet spot since you can draft value and be able to win value.
I went from 30 tickets to 110 tix last week from grinding out 3x Fate Reforged 4-3-2-2 ques. I dont think the 2 cents from any of these articles really means much to me. I dont like using numbers to explain MTG since they dont always tell the full story.
You are making claims about EV that you aren't supporting with any math. It's not really useful to say, "If you are not skilled it's difficult but if you have a strong understanding it's not." What win percentage does a player need in which queues of which formats to go infinite? You haven't presented any math to answer that question, you've only suggested that it's possible if you are good.
Here's a great tool that does the math for you with the variables and win rates you want to apply, including looking at the value of the cards in the boosters:
That's a realistic, math-based look at what it takes to come out ahead in a given format and queue, and it shows how hard it is. You need a 76-77% win rate to come out ahead in KTK 4322s while only 62% in 84s, but you are suggesting here that 4322s are the way to go.
Thanks and for sure. Theres many ways of going infnite on MTGO, I just prefer limited now a days since I dont like keeping up with Standard and dont feel like dumping money into an eternal format deck. I also dont have any plans of ever playing on the Pro Tour or anything of that nature, so to me it does not matter if im playing against LSV or some guy who is playing for the first time. When I get some free time, playing Magic is just a way of having fun and something I do with some friends. While this is also something I do for fun, I dont really want to spend money on it, which is why I took some time to figure out ways around that.
Really good article allthough I was looking for new information. One thing I have learned in my MTGO time though is you can go Infinite with PRE's that our beloved MTGOtrader is sponsoring and writing for PureMTGO. But that is just me and I love writing. If you want to go PRO with MTGO I say constructed is still the way to go infinite.
The competition is easier in a 4-3-2-2, so yes by nature its easier to get out of the 1st round than any 8-4. Playing in an 4-3-2-2 over an 8-4 has nothing to do with how good that you are. Your just playing the odds better by making sure that your always going to get packs every time you enter a que. Its a lot easier to get out of the 1st round than it is to get to the finals every single time, especially when the quality of players is also lower.
And what is the reason behind playing in a Swiss ques? Swiss ques are just plain awful unless there is something that I am misunderstanding about them. As I mentioned to someone else, you cant money draft really in swiss. Everyone is money drafting since there is no EV that can be gained by winning the event. You will get passed more money cards in 8-4s and 4-3-2-2s, but never in swiss since everyone is trying to cover their expenses. The fact that you cant even get your money back by winning a Swiss que makes it terrible EV. If your goal is to play some MTG and not spend a terrible amount, yes its fine, but if you dont want to spend any money, its not what you want to ever do.
Maybe I am just making it look easy, but if your not a very skilled at limited, then yes its "difficult". If you have stronger understanding of limited, then its definitely not difficult. People tend to think limited is harder but its only harder than constructed since with constructed you can just netdeck a good deck and have it win by its powerful nature. In limited, it takes a little work to make a powerful strategy. I cant really say that its "difficult", its more like something you just have to learn overtime.
I appreciate the effort you have made here and greatly respect earnest content creation, but you are spreading bad advice and setting unrealistic expectations with this article. It is much harder to go infinite at limited than you imply, and you instantly discredit your opinions on the subject by suggesting that it is "always best to draft a 4-3-2-2 over an 8-4 since its not terribly difficult to get out of the 1st round all the time."
The 4322 queue is never the correct prize-EV choice for anyone when Swiss and 84 are also available. The cost of a full pack of prize support is simply too high to overcome through win-rate differences. On top of that, if you are not good enough for 84 to be the correct queue choice over Swiss for pack EV, you are certainly not good enough to go infinite via drafting.
Also, if you found that episode of LR lacking in drafting strategy and card-evaluation techniques, you should listen to some of the other 270 episodes, which are chock-full of it. Given your beliefs about BREAD, 4322s, and when to money draft, you are someone who would benefit from checking out the Limited Resources back catalog.
Well playing swiss is probably your problem. Not only is EV non-existant there, but money drafting is as well. Everyone money drafts in swiss due to the lack of EV, so you cant do it very efficiently there. 4-3-2-2's are the best of both worlds since you can money draft, have easier competition and have a bit of security when you dr aft.
You can easily get a win percentage higher than 70% in limited. Theres patterns of how people draft on MTGO. After you play a decent amount of times, its easy to see how certain cards are being over and underdrafted.
Unless your drafting a set thats worth like 30 tickets, on average, its pretty easy to money draft 2-3 tix worth of cards. Its not hard to pick up some Stoke the Flames, Banishing Light, Bile blight type of cards a large majority of the time since they arent always going to go 1st or even 2nd-4th. Overtime it balances itself out since your going to get lucky and hit some reasonable mythic or good rare that will put you far ahead. If your playing 4-3-2-2's and can average 60-70 percentage in winning, then your going to end up getting 6-7 packs every 2 drafts, which when you add in the rares you got, you will either break even or barely come ahead. The goal at the end of the day is to get to that point. Thats the idea of going infinite. Even if its only 1 ticket your getting, your not spending anything except time, which is the only real drawback, but if your goal was to play some free MTG then its accomplished.
Depends on what you define as "difficult". Im sitting on my ass clicking buttons all day, is that really difficult haha? I think its only really difficult if you dont understand the fundamentals of MTG or the fundamentals of TCGS very well. Its not really rocket science that we are figuring out here.
A lot of figuring out these formats is just trial and error. After half a dozen or so drafts, you can pick up on the patterns of how people are drafting on MTGO and draft against them accordingly. This enables you to get a higher winning percentage than usual since it becomes very predictable of what type of decks people will be on. A buddy of mine did very well at 3x THS since all he did was draft GB control since everyone was trying to be aggressive. When everyone would draft Wx heroic, it would work most of the time.
Even if EV isnt super high, the idea is to go infinite. The idea here is to never pay for drafts. It doesnt matter if your making 5 tickets in a day or 50, the whole point is to play for free. Its pretty easy to be able to do that if your a very strong player. If your not that great of a player, then yeah going infinite is not possible.
Geist is mostly for mono black matcheps with all there edict effects in mind.
Coral Net is just removal vs stompy.
Torch is a cheap colorless shock and vampire aggro used to be a thing.
Not really deep secrets, as the low numbers indicate they weren't even hard counters so much as a gentile nudge.
The tempo game of the list is very strong.
The deck mostly loses to decks with lots of cheap removal that can overwhelm the counters.
I.E. They'll leave one mana untapped and try to kill your first creature with an instant, then after you counter that they'll try again on their turn for 1 mana again playing around daze.
Rinse and repeat until you run out of threats or they run out of removal.
Otherwise, stuff like affinity will withhold threats as long as they can to drop them in an explosive turn to overwhelm your counter/tempo package.
The only other type of deck that would want free counters like Daze would be some kind of combo list.
Or maybe a mill deck?
So that they could drop the enchantments as fast as possible while still having some protection up.
I'm trying a version of blue delver with four dazes. Seems ok so far.
What do you think of pestermite? I've used it in splinter twin to tap down attackers or blockers, or tap down tron lands to slow down my opponents long enough to grind out a win.
In blue delver, pestermite could do the same, and count as a faerie for spellstutter sprite.
I'm not sure if it's good enough for pauper, but it is maybe worth a try.
It's certainly possible to go infinite in limited, but it's not easy. The one draft format I was able to go infinite was Mirrodin Besieged/Scars of Mirrodin/Scars of Mirrodin.
In Mirrodin Besieged, the infect creatures were bigger and costed more and there was one less pack with Plague Stingers. Most people thought infect was now bad. I had drafted the format a few times avoiding infect but one draft I was getting cut and I was seeing infect cards flowing so I just started taking those. Almost every infect creature was getting back to me and I ended up with very good deck because this continued to happen in packs 2 and 3. I easily won the draft and in the next one I was still excited about infect so I went in trying to draft it unless I saw something really good in another direction. I drafted another very good infect deck. After a few more drafts I noticed that infect cards were always getting passed (there were a few exceptions for infect creatures that were good on their own). I started to force infect every draft and it would take something really good (like Hero of Bladehold) to not move to infect. And this was playing 8-4s.
So the best way to go infinite in a draft format, is knowing really well the format, usually knowing something most other people don't know. Eventually people caught on and infect was not underdrafted anymore and I left the format.
There were a couple other formats I was able to break even or have a small profit but never like this. In release sealed, I profitted in many formats. Zendikar releases were my best ones I think but Scard of Mirrodin and Fate Reforged just now were also good (I'm probably forgetting a few). But part of the reason is that these events have better EV than usual limited events.
I think you downplay the difficulty of going infinite but it's obviously possible and formats like triple Fate Reforged are usually good because most pros don't really touch them and there isn't much info so if you find out something, you're probably ahead of 90%+ of the field.
Daze is really a tempo card and Delver is the most tempoest of cards and they're in the same color so it almost doesn't even make sense if running Daze in a deck without delver.
I never actually played 8-4, I mostly play swiss (except when the new set is released, then I play 4-3-2-2 release events) where I tend to win approximately 2 packs per tournament. In most draft environments the EV of cards you get is not nearly close to being worth 4,5 - 6 tix, which you need to break even if your win % is 66%. And for most players it won't be 66%.
As far as winning round 1 in 4-3-2-2, you definitely can't just count on that. You probably have around 60-70% chance of advancing to R2 if you're a good player.
The variance is of course present in constructed events as well. But the EV of dailies for the same winrate is uncomparable to drafts. Even if you win only 50% of matches you will make money in dailies (if you can sell the boosters for more than 2.75 tix), which is far from the truth for drafts.
Also, are you suggesting that there are greater winrates in limited than in constructed? I thought it was the opposite, that good players will more consistently win in constructed.
Also#2, it's not always better to draft 4-3-2-2 than 8-4. Unless your win percentage is low, you will on average lose less playing 8-4 (but variance will be much higher). When calculating EV of an event, you can't just go by intuition and assume you will win round 1, open 6 tix worth of cards etc. You have to input your win% and EV of the boosters (adjusted accordingly for your raredrafting habits) and that will give you reasonable numbers to work with.
Game 2 I sided in the Pyroclasms, and got rid of the Vitu-Ghazis, a Sakura Tribe-Elder, and a Blaze. This decision was just backbreaking for him, as even with a draw of two Krovikan Mists and a Meloku, his 1/1s wilted in front of my ‘Clasms. The Angel showed up on turn 9, rather late, but better than never. She was able to swing free of harm, as first strike is really proving its worth. Thanks for posting such a useful article. Paid to click is an online business model that draws online traffic aiming to earn money from home.
This pool isn't bad at all - at least I didn't think it was bad when I started. There are three rares in white that are all playable in my opinion, and I could probably splash almost any other color I want because of the two vivid lands which are available. Thanks for posting such a useful article. Paid to click is an online business model that draws online traffic aiming to earn money from home.
Pick 5: Holy Day: COMPLETELY unplayable, but my naivity thought it could save me. In reality, its a horrible card and should never be drafted with intentions to put it in your deck. Thanks for posting such a useful article. Paid to click is an online business model that draws online traffic aiming to earn money from home.
I don't think you understand what EV means, otherwise you wouldn't say that EV is non-existant in swiss. EV is better in swiss if your winrate is lower than a certain % (around 62-66%, depends on which set you are drafting) and better in 4-3-2-2 if your winrate is higher than that. For me playing swiss is indeed a slightly worse option than playing 4-3-2-2 (strictly money wise), but the difference is minor, and I get to play 3 rounds no matter what. Since I know that with my winrate I am losing money no matter which event I play, I rather spend a fraction of a ticket more and play more time for my money.
You are not getting 6-7 packs per two 4-3-2-2 events with a winrate of 60-70%. You are getting 3.6 - 4.5 packs. It's a basic math and you are just throwing some unrealistic numbers out there.
I don't know what experience you have with playing Swiss vs 4-3-2-2, but I have played reasonable amounts of 4-3-2-2 (due to release events), and I don't think there is any substantial difference neither in skill level nor in cards being passed. In both formats you occassionally get passed some rare that is worth 1-4 tix (usually some rare land), but that is it. Maybe I'm wrong, because I haven't really paid attention to that aspect until now.
There are some situations where certain uncommons are worth a lot, and that can influence EV of the draft (though that can also reflect in the price of the boosters, so the EV might actually be lower because of that), but they are rare. FRF has Wild Slash and Valorous Stance that you can currently sell for around a tix, KTK has nothing, whole RTR block had nothing, Innistrad had nothing, SOM had nothing until NPH, same is true for Zendikar and ROE etc. Majority of time, when you draft a current set, uncommons and commons will be worth nothing, except just at the beginning and sometimes when the set stops being heavily drafted. But there are exceptions as you point out. You have to calculate the number of times you will open those high-price uncommons (and add an assumption of the times they will get passed to you) though, to get a realistic figure of what money you can expect from them.
As for "easily having win percentage higher than 70% in limited", I disagree. Maybe it's easy for you, but it's a very high percentage that only a small fraction of players can achieve.
The EV calculator incorporates the value of all the cards in a booster. As it says: "Takes into account difference between buy and sell prices. Rare & Mythic prices are from SuperNovaBots, 'money' Common & Uncommon prices are hand tabulated."
Regardless, even if uncommons *weren't* being tabulated by the EV calculator, incorporating such data would do nothing to increase the EV in 4322s without increasing it for Swiss and 84s as well. There is simply nothing in the math to support your claim that 4322s should be played over 84s and Swiss.
But hey, when the math doesn't fit your narrative, dismiss it out of hand, and present statistically-insignificant anecdotal evidence that *does* support your narrative! A time-honored response to pesky, unwanted statistics. Much easier than either disproving it with math of your own, or acknowledging that your gut might be in error.
In any case, while these math-supported resources may not be able to penetrate your willful ignorance on this subject, they now at least accompany your article as a warning for rational thinkers who might otherwise make the mistake of taking your queue advice at face value.
Matthew presented an alternative voice to going infinite that I felt was worth looking at. I see with the amount of discussion that has sprung up over this it was correct!
Yeah I dont agree with any of that. Both MagicEV and those articles fail to realize one thing, and that is those uncommons that are worth 1-3 tix. That is why I call it "money drafting" and not "rare drafting", since you have uncommons worth more than mythics. Also none of those articles mention how money is not passed very often in Swiss. This is why 4-3-2-2 is the sweet spot since you can draft value and be able to win value.
I went from 30 tickets to 110 tix last week from grinding out 3x Fate Reforged 4-3-2-2 ques. I dont think the 2 cents from any of these articles really means much to me. I dont like using numbers to explain MTG since they dont always tell the full story.
Check out this blog post to better understand the underlying math that's working against you: https://josephbono.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/the-win-rate-fallacy-and-4-3...
There's also this article from Pure on rare drafting: http://puremtgo.com/articles/ev-raredrafting-and-you
You are making claims about EV that you aren't supporting with any math. It's not really useful to say, "If you are not skilled it's difficult but if you have a strong understanding it's not." What win percentage does a player need in which queues of which formats to go infinite? You haven't presented any math to answer that question, you've only suggested that it's possible if you are good.
Here's a great tool that does the math for you with the variables and win rates you want to apply, including looking at the value of the cards in the boosters:
http://www.magicev.com/
That's a realistic, math-based look at what it takes to come out ahead in a given format and queue, and it shows how hard it is. You need a 76-77% win rate to come out ahead in KTK 4322s while only 62% in 84s, but you are suggesting here that 4322s are the way to go.
Thanks and for sure. Theres many ways of going infnite on MTGO, I just prefer limited now a days since I dont like keeping up with Standard and dont feel like dumping money into an eternal format deck. I also dont have any plans of ever playing on the Pro Tour or anything of that nature, so to me it does not matter if im playing against LSV or some guy who is playing for the first time. When I get some free time, playing Magic is just a way of having fun and something I do with some friends. While this is also something I do for fun, I dont really want to spend money on it, which is why I took some time to figure out ways around that.
Really good article allthough I was looking for new information. One thing I have learned in my MTGO time though is you can go Infinite with PRE's that our beloved MTGOtrader is sponsoring and writing for PureMTGO. But that is just me and I love writing. If you want to go PRO with MTGO I say constructed is still the way to go infinite.
The competition is easier in a 4-3-2-2, so yes by nature its easier to get out of the 1st round than any 8-4. Playing in an 4-3-2-2 over an 8-4 has nothing to do with how good that you are. Your just playing the odds better by making sure that your always going to get packs every time you enter a que. Its a lot easier to get out of the 1st round than it is to get to the finals every single time, especially when the quality of players is also lower.
And what is the reason behind playing in a Swiss ques? Swiss ques are just plain awful unless there is something that I am misunderstanding about them. As I mentioned to someone else, you cant money draft really in swiss. Everyone is money drafting since there is no EV that can be gained by winning the event. You will get passed more money cards in 8-4s and 4-3-2-2s, but never in swiss since everyone is trying to cover their expenses. The fact that you cant even get your money back by winning a Swiss que makes it terrible EV. If your goal is to play some MTG and not spend a terrible amount, yes its fine, but if you dont want to spend any money, its not what you want to ever do.
Maybe I am just making it look easy, but if your not a very skilled at limited, then yes its "difficult". If you have stronger understanding of limited, then its definitely not difficult. People tend to think limited is harder but its only harder than constructed since with constructed you can just netdeck a good deck and have it win by its powerful nature. In limited, it takes a little work to make a powerful strategy. I cant really say that its "difficult", its more like something you just have to learn overtime.
I appreciate the effort you have made here and greatly respect earnest content creation, but you are spreading bad advice and setting unrealistic expectations with this article. It is much harder to go infinite at limited than you imply, and you instantly discredit your opinions on the subject by suggesting that it is "always best to draft a 4-3-2-2 over an 8-4 since its not terribly difficult to get out of the 1st round all the time."
The 4322 queue is never the correct prize-EV choice for anyone when Swiss and 84 are also available. The cost of a full pack of prize support is simply too high to overcome through win-rate differences. On top of that, if you are not good enough for 84 to be the correct queue choice over Swiss for pack EV, you are certainly not good enough to go infinite via drafting.
Also, if you found that episode of LR lacking in drafting strategy and card-evaluation techniques, you should listen to some of the other 270 episodes, which are chock-full of it. Given your beliefs about BREAD, 4322s, and when to money draft, you are someone who would benefit from checking out the Limited Resources back catalog.
Well playing swiss is probably your problem. Not only is EV non-existant there, but money drafting is as well. Everyone money drafts in swiss due to the lack of EV, so you cant do it very efficiently there. 4-3-2-2's are the best of both worlds since you can money draft, have easier competition and have a bit of security when you dr aft.
You can easily get a win percentage higher than 70% in limited. Theres patterns of how people draft on MTGO. After you play a decent amount of times, its easy to see how certain cards are being over and underdrafted.
Unless your drafting a set thats worth like 30 tickets, on average, its pretty easy to money draft 2-3 tix worth of cards. Its not hard to pick up some Stoke the Flames, Banishing Light, Bile blight type of cards a large majority of the time since they arent always going to go 1st or even 2nd-4th. Overtime it balances itself out since your going to get lucky and hit some reasonable mythic or good rare that will put you far ahead. If your playing 4-3-2-2's and can average 60-70 percentage in winning, then your going to end up getting 6-7 packs every 2 drafts, which when you add in the rares you got, you will either break even or barely come ahead. The goal at the end of the day is to get to that point. Thats the idea of going infinite. Even if its only 1 ticket your getting, your not spending anything except time, which is the only real drawback, but if your goal was to play some free MTG then its accomplished.
Depends on what you define as "difficult". Im sitting on my ass clicking buttons all day, is that really difficult haha? I think its only really difficult if you dont understand the fundamentals of MTG or the fundamentals of TCGS very well. Its not really rocket science that we are figuring out here.
A lot of figuring out these formats is just trial and error. After half a dozen or so drafts, you can pick up on the patterns of how people are drafting on MTGO and draft against them accordingly. This enables you to get a higher winning percentage than usual since it becomes very predictable of what type of decks people will be on. A buddy of mine did very well at 3x THS since all he did was draft GB control since everyone was trying to be aggressive. When everyone would draft Wx heroic, it would work most of the time.
Even if EV isnt super high, the idea is to go infinite. The idea here is to never pay for drafts. It doesnt matter if your making 5 tickets in a day or 50, the whole point is to play for free. Its pretty easy to be able to do that if your a very strong player. If your not that great of a player, then yeah going infinite is not possible.
TBH I didn't actually try. I like having a delver deck in every format I play anyway. That bug is my friend.
Something you may want to try out at some point..
Grim Discovery alongside Quicksand and various cycling cards as well as spell-like creatures.
Geist is mostly for mono black matcheps with all there edict effects in mind.
Coral Net is just removal vs stompy.
Torch is a cheap colorless shock and vampire aggro used to be a thing.
Not really deep secrets, as the low numbers indicate they weren't even hard counters so much as a gentile nudge.
The tempo game of the list is very strong.
The deck mostly loses to decks with lots of cheap removal that can overwhelm the counters.
I.E. They'll leave one mana untapped and try to kill your first creature with an instant, then after you counter that they'll try again on their turn for 1 mana again playing around daze.
Rinse and repeat until you run out of threats or they run out of removal.
Otherwise, stuff like affinity will withhold threats as long as they can to drop them in an explosive turn to overwhelm your counter/tempo package.
The only other type of deck that would want free counters like Daze would be some kind of combo list.
Or maybe a mill deck?
So that they could drop the enchantments as fast as possible while still having some protection up.
Yeah...but...I dared him... :(
I'm trying a version of blue delver with four dazes. Seems ok so far.
What do you think of pestermite? I've used it in splinter twin to tap down attackers or blockers, or tap down tron lands to slow down my opponents long enough to grind out a win.
In blue delver, pestermite could do the same, and count as a faerie for spellstutter sprite.
I'm not sure if it's good enough for pauper, but it is maybe worth a try.
It's certainly possible to go infinite in limited, but it's not easy. The one draft format I was able to go infinite was Mirrodin Besieged/Scars of Mirrodin/Scars of Mirrodin.
In Mirrodin Besieged, the infect creatures were bigger and costed more and there was one less pack with Plague Stingers. Most people thought infect was now bad. I had drafted the format a few times avoiding infect but one draft I was getting cut and I was seeing infect cards flowing so I just started taking those. Almost every infect creature was getting back to me and I ended up with very good deck because this continued to happen in packs 2 and 3. I easily won the draft and in the next one I was still excited about infect so I went in trying to draft it unless I saw something really good in another direction. I drafted another very good infect deck. After a few more drafts I noticed that infect cards were always getting passed (there were a few exceptions for infect creatures that were good on their own). I started to force infect every draft and it would take something really good (like Hero of Bladehold) to not move to infect. And this was playing 8-4s.
So the best way to go infinite in a draft format, is knowing really well the format, usually knowing something most other people don't know. Eventually people caught on and infect was not underdrafted anymore and I left the format.
There were a couple other formats I was able to break even or have a small profit but never like this. In release sealed, I profitted in many formats. Zendikar releases were my best ones I think but Scard of Mirrodin and Fate Reforged just now were also good (I'm probably forgetting a few). But part of the reason is that these events have better EV than usual limited events.
I think you downplay the difficulty of going infinite but it's obviously possible and formats like triple Fate Reforged are usually good because most pros don't really touch them and there isn't much info so if you find out something, you're probably ahead of 90%+ of the field.
I failed.
Daze is really a tempo card and Delver is the most tempoest of cards and they're in the same color so it almost doesn't even make sense if running Daze in a deck without delver.
What happened to building a nondelver deck with daze???
what's up with suncom? is that not a thing anymore?
I never actually played 8-4, I mostly play swiss (except when the new set is released, then I play 4-3-2-2 release events) where I tend to win approximately 2 packs per tournament. In most draft environments the EV of cards you get is not nearly close to being worth 4,5 - 6 tix, which you need to break even if your win % is 66%. And for most players it won't be 66%.
As far as winning round 1 in 4-3-2-2, you definitely can't just count on that. You probably have around 60-70% chance of advancing to R2 if you're a good player.
The variance is of course present in constructed events as well. But the EV of dailies for the same winrate is uncomparable to drafts. Even if you win only 50% of matches you will make money in dailies (if you can sell the boosters for more than 2.75 tix), which is far from the truth for drafts.
Also, are you suggesting that there are greater winrates in limited than in constructed? I thought it was the opposite, that good players will more consistently win in constructed.
Also#2, it's not always better to draft 4-3-2-2 than 8-4. Unless your win percentage is low, you will on average lose less playing 8-4 (but variance will be much higher). When calculating EV of an event, you can't just go by intuition and assume you will win round 1, open 6 tix worth of cards etc. You have to input your win% and EV of the boosters (adjusted accordingly for your raredrafting habits) and that will give you reasonable numbers to work with.
Game 2 I sided in the Pyroclasms, and got rid of the Vitu-Ghazis, a Sakura Tribe-Elder, and a Blaze. This decision was just backbreaking for him, as even with a draw of two Krovikan Mists and a Meloku, his 1/1s wilted in front of my ‘Clasms. The Angel showed up on turn 9, rather late, but better than never. She was able to swing free of harm, as first strike is really proving its worth. Thanks for posting such a useful article. Paid to click is an online business model that draws online traffic aiming to earn money from home.
This pool isn't bad at all - at least I didn't think it was bad when I started. There are three rares in white that are all playable in my opinion, and I could probably splash almost any other color I want because of the two vivid lands which are available. Thanks for posting such a useful article. Paid to click is an online business model that draws online traffic aiming to earn money from home.
Pick 5: Holy Day: COMPLETELY unplayable, but my naivity thought it could save me. In reality, its a horrible card and should never be drafted with intentions to put it in your deck. Thanks for posting such a useful article. Paid to click is an online business model that draws online traffic aiming to earn money from home.