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thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Bust Rodd posted:

its in your settings under gameplay

Presumably turning off 'auto order triggered abilityies'? Thanks

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Oceanbound
Jan 19, 2008

Time to let the dead be dead.

Lone Goat posted:

daybreak chimera in the sideboard is a crime, and I'd try to play that 2 drop since any game that goes late is yours. you just want to trade and stall and gently caress around til you get there. play the 3 mana counterspell too, and the 2/3 flier that gets vig and lifelink.

I think playing some of these shitter enchantment creatures just to support archon is a mistake. don't like envoy or either nyxborn here. if you didn't have trawler or the saga it'd be a different story, but you're making your overall card quality much lower when you have an unbeatable end game.

Don't think the chimera works in the deck as I have way more early blue plays than white ones, so I doubt it would get a discount most of the time. I also don't really need a 3/3 flyer to win.

Yes the plan is to just hang around until I drop Trawler or Kiora to win (or get a stream of Archon activations), so the Nxyborns and the turtle are big butts that stop aggro pretty well. Also this is something that the Sunmane sucks at doing. The Envoy wasn't just there for Archon, but it's an early flyer that can wear the Staggering Insight.

Ended up going 5-0, although I'm not sure there was much to learn besides "Trawler/Kiora/Archon = nuts". Heliod's Intervention was super disgusting though.

Most of the sideboards were putting in Triumphant Surge and Flicker for Shoal Kraken / a Nyxborn

Dr. Stab
Sep 12, 2010
👨🏻‍⚕️🩺🔪🙀😱🙀

Truga posted:

Nah the stats make sense, I could get to mythic easier if I just opened packs instead of drafting because I'd get more wildcards. I just wouldn't have the mastery pass thingies then. I think now that I'm already starting at a bunch of gems instead of just whatever new accounts get, it'll be much easier tho. Also not starting the season a month late.

I' m not talking about drafting instead of opening packs. I mean drafting enough to get the mastery pass and then quitting. The mastery pass is pretty big. The eld mastery pass nets you 23 packs by simply having the gems to begin with.

If you're a 30% winrate player, and value draft packs at half a normal pack, you're going to scrub out of most of your drafts before getting 2 wins, and still make your money back on the mastery pass.

Dr. Stab fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Jan 22, 2020

Truga
May 4, 2014
Lipstick Apathy

Dr. Stab posted:

If you're a 30% winrate player, and value draft packs at half a normal pack, you're going to scrub out of half your drafts 0-3, and still make your money back on the mastery pass.

Yeah, I get the point, but please don't doxx me.

i think so far my average is 1-3, if only because i keep pulling all the loving lands with 16 per deck for first two games, then win a game or two before losing normally :v:

Lone Goat
Apr 16, 2003

When life gives you lemons, suplex those lemons.




Oceanbound posted:

Don't think the chimera works in the deck as I have way more early blue plays than white ones, so I doubt it would get a discount most of the time. I also don't really need a 3/3 flyer to win.

Yes the plan is to just hang around until I drop Trawler or Kiora to win (or get a stream of Archon activations), so the Nxyborns and the turtle are big butts that stop aggro pretty well. Also this is something that the Sunmane sucks at doing. The Envoy wasn't just there for Archon, but it's an early flyer that can wear the Staggering Insight.

Ended up going 5-0, although I'm not sure there was much to learn besides "Trawler/Kiora/Archon = nuts". Heliod's Intervention was super disgusting though.

Most of the sideboards were putting in Triumphant Surge and Flicker for Shoal Kraken / a Nyxborn

Yeah that all makes sense. I was mostly worried about the mana costs on the nyxborn and the lack of impact of envoy without insight on it.

Rhaegar
Jul 16, 2006
Does sealed not count towards the limited rank?

Huxley
Oct 10, 2012



Grimey Drawer

Rhaegar posted:

Does sealed not count towards the limited rank?

No, only the Bo1 they call "Ranked Draft" counts toward your rank (and also your one-draft-per-month you want to play to get your free pack).

Zero VGS
Aug 16, 2002
ASK ME ABOUT HOW HUMAN LIVES THAT MADE VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS ARE WORTH MORE
Lipstick Apathy

Truga posted:

how do you f2p without drafting? is there another way to get gems? or do you just.. not?

I did that "omniscience" draft where nothing cost mana and went infinite playing it like a dozen times in a day, so that got me like 6000 gems (entered said draft with gold), only thing I use gems on is the Mastery Pass for all the extra poo poo.

I have 200000 gold right now even after buying a couple dozen TBD packs because I never miss the dailies and often do all 15 wins.

Zero VGS fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jan 22, 2020

Rhaegar
Jul 16, 2006

Huxley posted:

No, only the Bo1 they call "Ranked Draft" counts toward your rank (and also your one-draft-per-month you want to play to get your free pack).

So I've basically got to do 1 eldraine draft to get the free pack. I can't do sealed or traditional draft for Theros. drat.

Huxley
Oct 10, 2012



Grimey Drawer

Rhaegar posted:

So I've basically got to do 1 eldraine draft to get the free pack. I can't do sealed or traditional draft for Theros. drat.

They will unlock Ranked Theros draft on the 31st. I'm not near the client now to see when the season actually ends, but if the season ends before the 31st and you haven't already played a ranked draft game in January, your only option to earn that pack is Eldraine.

Your other option is missing out on that free pack for January. It's not a bad option if an Eldraine draft and one Theros pack is worth less to you than a Theros draft. Depends on how much Eldraine you've opened and how much you value those cards.

Rhaegar
Jul 16, 2006
Thanks. I have all Eldraine rares so, no, it's not worth it to play a draft in that format. Hopefully I can catch a Theros draft before the season ends. I don't understand the reasoning for why traditional draft and sealed don't count. They are limited.

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames

Rhaegar posted:

Thanks. I have all Eldraine rares so, no, it's not worth it to play a draft in that format. Hopefully I can catch a Theros draft before the season ends. I don't understand the reasoning for why traditional draft and sealed don't count. They are limited.

They are unranked

Setec_Astronomy
Mar 10, 2003

there's nothing wrong with you that an expensive operation can't prolong

Bust Rodd posted:

They are unranked

Yes, but why is there not a ranked Theros option available? It’s bizarre that the only way to rank up in limited is to play an old (solved) format rather than a newer more competitive format.

Huxley
Oct 10, 2012



Grimey Drawer
It's just a quirk of the calendar, mostly.

I'm not sure why they don't let Bo1 and Bo3 climb the same ladder in standard but not in limited, but that's the choice they're on. Combine that with them pushing the gem formats at release, Arena release coming like 10 days before paper release, and the season turnover being kind of a floaty thing, it just so happened that it landed funny.

Next set might release on the 10th, ranked draft will open on the 24th and you'll have a full week of the new set to get that win in.

Also, for all we know the season flips on Feb 1, not Jan 31, and you'll have one day of crossover to get that game in. I'm not in front of the computer to check.

imweasel09
May 26, 2014


Setec_Astronomy posted:

Yes, but why is there not a ranked Theros option available? It’s bizarre that the only way to rank up in limited is to play an old (solved) format rather than a newer more competitive format.

Because the ranked theros costs gold and the other formats cost gems. That's the entire reason.

Kjermzs
Sep 15, 2007

Thanks for all the :words:!

Paul Zuvella
Dec 7, 2011

Setec_Astronomy posted:

Yes, but why is there not a ranked Theros option available? It’s bizarre that the only way to rank up in limited is to play an old (solved) format rather than a newer more competitive format.

If you want to play with the new cards you have to pay them money.

Setec_Astronomy
Mar 10, 2003

there's nothing wrong with you that an expensive operation can't prolong

Paul Zuvella posted:

If you want to play with the new cards you have to pay them money.

That I understand — but nothing prevents them having ranked BO3 that’s gem-only. Honestly I’d also be fine with gem-only BO1 that starts allowing gold after 2 weeks, but I can see how they would want to avoid the optics on that.

Paul Zuvella
Dec 7, 2011

I mean its an absolute joke that the "Ranked" format is best of one already, and its an absolute joke that we draft against bots.

The draft situation on arena is like, really atrocious.

Marketing New Brain
Apr 26, 2008

Setec_Astronomy posted:

Yes, but why is there not a ranked Theros option available? It’s bizarre that the only way to rank up in limited is to play an old (solved) format rather than a newer more competitive format.

Ranked Bo1 draft is it's own little world. At the lower end it's just people converting gold to gems packs, but once you get into the high end, you realize there's a very small group of extremely competitive drafters that just constantly smash into one another to fight for the ~300 people that make mythic by the end of a season. At least that was my experience when I for some reason challenged myself to do limited and constructed mythic in the same month.

I never ran into the same player back to back in ranked constructed, but in ranked draft I once played the same player 3 times in a row. It also has some problems, where you aren't penalized rank for abandoning a draft so anyone seeking to climb high enough that doesn't care about money can get a big competitive edge by just waiting until they have really good drafts and never playing out their bad drafts.

It's really a card acquisition mode that has a weird ranked mode stapled on top of it than anything that resembles a ranked draft mode, even if a lot of the top end of it are excellent limited players because that's basically the only group that is interested in the relatively expensive grind to get to mythic even with a high win rate.

Marketing New Brain fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Jan 22, 2020

SuperKlaus
Oct 20, 2005


Fun Shoe
Ah so I can get the gems I need to turn my welcome bundle purchase into a mastery pass if I go to ranked draft huh? I'm following the conversations here and learning what I can as quickly as I can but if someone has a link for basics of how to draft I'd appreciate it cuz I'm even more a babe in the woods there than playing the precons in constructed.

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

SuperKlaus posted:

Ah so I can get the gems I need to turn my welcome bundle purchase into a mastery pass if I go to ranked draft huh? I'm following the conversations here and learning what I can as quickly as I can but if someone has a link for basics of how to draft I'd appreciate it cuz I'm even more a babe in the woods there than playing the precons in constructed.

If you've never drafted before you are HIGLY unlikely to make your money back. It take 6 wins to get your money back before 3 losses, and as someone who started maybe 3 months ago, I'm still only at the point where I can reasonably reliably get 3 wins.

But if you can go infinite drafting, more power to you, but the way to gain gems is to pay with gold, not pay with gems.

It doesn't have to be ranked, by the by, any draft format with gem prizes will pay back more than it costs in gems past a certain threshold of wins (or can be used to launder gold into gems, generally, if it has a gold buy-in), and non-ranked ones are going to be easier generally. But playing ranked enough to get to silver or gold (reasonably easy even as a newbie) will get you some rewards at the end of the season in packs and gold. no gems, though.

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
All Draft advice is weird because you can be as prepared as possible and do tons of research and then still open a bad pool with weird signals from Bots. It’s just something that you have to get a feel for.

axeil
Feb 14, 2006

Dr. Stab posted:

I' m not talking about drafting instead of opening packs. I mean drafting enough to get the mastery pass and then quitting. The mastery pass is pretty big. The eld mastery pass nets you 23 packs by simply having the gems to begin with.

If you're a 30% winrate player, and value draft packs at half a normal pack, you're going to scrub out of most of your drafts before getting 2 wins, and still make your money back on the mastery pass.

I really wish there was a ghost draft because I mostly use drafts to fill up my collection which usually results in some very sketchy draft picks and weak decks. I'd keep drafting after getting a full set of rares but the economics of doing a draft don't make much sense then as most of the value you get is from the 3 packs of cards you draft with.

Having a phantom draft that was only say 3000G to enter would really appeal to me because I like drafting but I'm not going to throw my money into doing more drafts when I'm getting very little in the way of rewards. Plus you could let people screw around with wacky cube type-drafts too.

cams
Mar 28, 2003


"going infinite" or even coming up ahead with a limited bankroll is not a guarantee or anywhere near as close to as easy as people posting here would lead you to believe. i've been playing magic for two-thirds of my life and sometimes i go 0-3 because this is a card game where much of the outcome is outside your hands.

if limited sounds fun to you, play limited. i strongly recommend against going into limited thinking "i'm going infinite" cause that way sorrow lies. if you want to roll the dice, go nuts, but it is not easy or even likely. if you really want the mastery pass but aren't going to spend any more money, steadily do your dailies and save up gold for ranked drafts so you can get the gems you need for it. i don't even feel great recommending this because if you go 0-3, 1-3, or even 2-3, the return on your 5000 gold is pretty lovely.

once you have the mastery pass, if you care about constructed more than limited, spend your gold on packs. people like to say "well you get to open packs in limited", but those packs do not increase the wild card wheel, nor do they have a chance of spawning with a rare or mythic wildcard, making them VASTLY inferior to buying packs.

axeil
Feb 14, 2006

cams posted:

"going infinite" or even coming up ahead with a limited bankroll is not a guarantee or anywhere near as close to as easy as people posting here would lead you to believe. i've been playing magic for two-thirds of my life and sometimes i go 0-3 because this is a card game where much of the outcome is outside your hands.

if limited sounds fun to you, play limited. i strongly recommend against going into limited thinking "i'm going infinite" cause that way sorrow lies. if you want to roll the dice, go nuts, but it is not easy or even likely. if you really want the mastery pass but aren't going to spend any more money, steadily do your dailies and save up gold for ranked drafts so you can get the gems you need for it. i don't even feel great recommending this because if you go 0-3, 1-3, or even 2-3, the return on your 5000 gold is pretty lovely.

once you have the mastery pass, if you care about constructed more than limited, spend your gold on packs. people like to say "well you get to open packs in limited", but those packs do not increase the wild card wheel, nor do they have a chance of spawning with a rare or mythic wildcard, making them VASTLY inferior to buying packs.

The main return you get from drafts is by rare drafting and trying to get an extra rare out of it. If you rare draft 4 cards and get awarded 1 pack for going 0-3 you've basically come out the same as if you had just used the 5000 gold for 5 packs.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
Honestly just look up LSV's set reviews to see what cards are good in Limited. They're wrong, but if you have no idea what you're doing they're better than nothing.

Once you've got the hang of things then ask the people in the thread that play way too many Arena drafts for the real scoop.

cams
Mar 28, 2003


axeil posted:

The main return you get from drafts is by rare drafting and trying to get an extra rare out of it. If you rare draft 4 cards and get awarded 1 pack for going 0-3 you've basically come out the same as if you had just used the 5000 gold for 5 packs.
...only if those 4 rares you pulled are actually good and are actively going in constructed decks. a rare you are not actively planning on using has a value of 0. 4 rares that aren't constructed viable have zero value.

if you spend 5000 gold on packs, you get 5 rares, each of those having a 1 in 24 chance of being a wildcard, and are 5/6 of the way to a guaranteed wildcard.

Squinky v2.0
Nov 16, 2006

Behind you! A three headed monkey!

College Slice
On the other hand drafting is the best way to play magic

No Wave
Sep 18, 2005

HA! HA! NICE! WHAT A TOOL!
If only arena had drafting

axeil
Feb 14, 2006

Squinky v2.0 posted:

On the other hand drafting is the best way to play magic

No Wave posted:

If only arena had drafting

These are both very true. I'd definitely play more limited if it actually felt like playing limited. Drafting against the bots is an utter joke and it's ridiculous that this is still the experience over a year in.

At bare minimum they should make Sealed bo3 and have pods for bo3 draft. bo1 Sealed is just a total crapshoot and makes things way too high variance.

cams posted:

...only if those 4 rares you pulled are actually good and are actively going in constructed decks. a rare you are not actively planning on using has a value of 0. 4 rares that aren't constructed viable have zero value.

if you spend 5000 gold on packs, you get 5 rares, each of those having a 1 in 24 chance of being a wildcard, and are 5/6 of the way to a guaranteed wildcard.

Even if you pick a lovely rare that's one less lovely rare you'll get from a pack you open later on down the line from Mastery rewards, draft prizes, etc. The whole philosophy of the rare draft system as a way to do collections in Arena is to abuse the duplicate protection from pack openings to guarantee when you finally do open packs you'll get all the rares.

The loss of wildcards from drafting is the biggest downside though, I have no argument there. Although in theory if you use the Arena rare draft system enough not having that many rare wildcards won't really matter.

I did this during Eldraine and it took ~25 drafts for me to be safe to open packs and I used the gold I had saved up so it didn't cost anything. The renewal rewards really helped speed things up though. This season I have around 85k gold and 25k in gems so I'll be able to get all the rares again without spending a penny.


edit: I do grant that if you don't have a huge mountain of gold saved up this strategy might be iffy, but once you do the pattern is:

1. Draft to critical point

Use the equation D = (53*4 - P*7/8*11/12 - R)/(N+W*7/8*11/12)

where

R = Total number of Rares of that set already in your collection
P = Total number of reward packs of that set already in your collection
N = Number of "new" Rares you pull from a draft on average (Higher earlier, lesser later, but an average across the set is fine.)
W = Average number of reward packs from doing the draft.
D = Number of drafts you still need to do.

N is usually around 3.5 or so, W is usually around 1.2 if you're not very good

2. Open packs when D <= 0

3. Save up gold/gems for next set

4. Repeat


It's about 215 or so packs to guarantee a full compliment of rares which is 215,000 gold. Using the above method you can knock the total gold required to about 100k or so. Using the conversion that 1000G = 200 gems it's approximately 43,000 gems for a full set of rares or $220 assuming you buy gems at the best conversion rate. So by doing this you can save around $120 a set.

Whether that makes sense for you is up for you to decide but there is a noticeable savings, assuming you're wanting a full set of rares for deck brewing purposes/Historic/eventually Pioneer/etc.

One thing to note though, is that this absolutely does not make sense for mythic rares. They are passed so infrequently in draft that N is pretty close to what you would find just from opening packs, on top of mythic rares being far more rare than standard rares and some drafts not giving you any mythics.

axeil fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jan 22, 2020

babypolis
Nov 4, 2009

Bust Rodd posted:

All Draft advice is weird because you can be as prepared as possible and do tons of research and then still open a bad pool with weird signals from Bots. It’s just something that you have to get a feel for.

I mean theres lots variance for sure but theres already tons of variance in any magic game, its nothing new. knowing how to make the best out of a bad pool is a pretty important limited skill

also the main return to limited is that limited is lots of fun!

cenotaph
Mar 2, 2013



Gonna have like 95k saved up by the time gold draft hits and I'm really looking forward to it.

Waffleopolis
Apr 24, 2005

It's time....for the MAIN event!
Theros sealed has been good to be. 5-3 with Gruul, 7-2 with Selesnya, and not 7-2 with this barely sultai deck



No graveyard shenanigans even with self-milling, but it got the job done. I also didn't whiff ONCE with Atris. I'm not sure ppl know how to properly pile.

Waffleopolis fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jan 22, 2020

Zero VGS
Aug 16, 2002
ASK ME ABOUT HOW HUMAN LIVES THAT MADE VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS ARE WORTH MORE
Lipstick Apathy

SuperKlaus posted:

Ah so I can get the gems I need to turn my welcome bundle purchase into a mastery pass if I go to ranked draft huh? I'm following the conversations here and learning what I can as quickly as I can but if someone has a link for basics of how to draft I'd appreciate it cuz I'm even more a babe in the woods there than playing the precons in constructed.

I waited for that "omniscience draft", not sure when that will show up again but the two things that made it so lucrative were:

1) I could enter it using gold (you have to wait later in the cycle for gold drafts to show up)

2) There was a winning strategy (pretty much draft every single card that says "draw a card" on it, since they're all free cantrips) that somehow a lot of people didn't get the hang of.

But even if you only have middling success at the gold drafts, if you do dailies, save up your gold, and run gold drafts when they're around, you should at least always have enough gems for each mastery pass.

odiv
Jan 12, 2003

Omniscience draft would be a completely different format with human drafts instead of bots. Probably not as good, but having not played it I have no idea.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
Omnidraft would be pretty rough with humans, you'd get stuck with a lot more terrible (in the format) 2-drops and stuff.

Ironically while card advantage would still be god, cantrips would be less appealing than a good card that can win you the game.

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!
Yeah, Omni draft was amazing, it's the only draft format I've eve gone 7/0 on, even though I didn't actually make money off it in the end, I think I played it a few times then went back to normal drafts with the gems, rather than farming it, which was a mistake. Especially as it was hilariously fun.

I still want to know if it's possible to do a turn one kill, I suspect it is, in the right format.

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem

thespaceinvader posted:

Yeah, Omni draft was amazing, it's the only draft format I've eve gone 7/0 on, even though I didn't actually make money off it in the end, I think I played it a few times then went back to normal drafts with the gems, rather than farming it, which was a mistake. Especially as it was hilariously fun.

I still want to know if it's possible to do a turn one kill, I suspect it is, in the right format.

It's been possibly in literally every Omni format so far, I think.

The one I managed to pull off was Shared Summons + Scholar of Stars + Unsummon + Cavalier of Flame.

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Network42
Oct 23, 2002
Turn 1 kills were possible and great in m20 omnidraft. It might be the best format ever.

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